index.md

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Code navigation

Navigate your code with tooling that understands it

Code navigation enables developers to explore code by

• jumping to definitions
• finding references
• listing implementations
• browsing symbols defined in current document or folder
• navigate dependencies
• documentation in hover tooltips

★ Try it on public code! Enable it for your code Examples 🗂 Indexers

Code navigation is made up of multiple features that build on top of each other:

• Search-based code navigation works out of the box with all of the most popular programming languages, powered by Sourcegraph's code search. Our default search-based code navigation uses syntactic-level heuristics (no language-level semantic information) for fast, performant searches across large code bases.
• Precise code navigation powers our code graph by using compile-time information to provide users with an extremely precise and accurate cross-repository¹ experience. This means you'll get an accurate view of all symbols and where they are used across your code base.

Precise code navigation requires language-specific indexers to be generated and uploaded to your instance. We currently have precise code navigation support for the languages below. See the indexers page for a detailed breakdown of each indexer's status.

Language	Indexer	Status
Go	lsif-go	🟢 Generally available
TypeScript, JavaScript	scip-typescript	🟢 Generally available
C, C++	scip-clang	🟡 Partially available
Java, Kotlin, Scala	scip-java	🟢 Generally available
Rust	rust-analyzer	🟢 Generally available
Python	scip-python	🟢 Generally available
Ruby	scip-ruby	🟢 Generally available
C#, Visual Basic	scip-dotnet	🟡 Partially available

• Auto-indexing uses Sourcegraph executors to create indexes for the code in your Sourcegraph instance, giving you up-to-date, cross-repository code navigation.
• Beta Dependency navigation allows you to navigate and search through the dependencies of your code, leveraging precise code navigation and auto-indexing.

Code navigation for your code

Here's how you go from search-based code navigation to automatically updating, precise code navigation across multiple repositories and dependencies:

1. Navigate code with search-based code navigation.

2. Start using precise code navigation by creating an index of a repository and uploading it to your Sourcegraph instance:

   • Index a Go repository
   • Index a TypeScript or JavaScript repository
   • Index a Java, Scala, or Kotlin repository
   • Index a Python repository
   • Index a Ruby repository

3. Optionally automate index uploading by adding indexing and uploading to your CI setup.

4. Enable auto-indexing on your Sourcegraph instance to get automatic precise code navigation. Sourcegraph will automatically index your repositories and enable precise code navigation for them.

5. Set up auto-dependency indexing to navigate and search through the dependencies your code uses:

   • Go: Enable auto-indexing and Sourcegraph will start indexing your dependencies.
   • JavaScript, TypeScript: Enable auto-indexing and set up an npm dependencies code host.
   • Java, Scala, Kotlin: Enable auto-indexing and set up a JVM dependencies code host.

Once set up, you can use code navigation with popular development tools:

• In the Sourcegraph web UI
• When browsing code on your code host, via integrations
• While looking at diffs in your code review tool, via integrations
• In the Sourcegraph API

Explanations

• Introduction to code navigation
• Precise code navigation
  • Code graph data uploads
• Search-based code navigation
• Code navigation features
• Beta Rockskip: Faster search-based code navigation
• Writing an indexer
• Auto-indexing
• Auto-indexing inference

How-to guides

• General

  • Configure data retention policies

• Language-specific guides

  • Index a Go repository
  • Index a TypeScript or JavaScript repository
  • Index a Java, Scala, or Kotlin repository

• Automate uploading code graph data

  • Add code graph data to many repositories
  • Adding code graph data to CI workflows
  • Enable auto-indexing
  • Configure auto-indexing

• Best practices

  • Guide to defining policies as it relates to resource usage

Reference

• Requirements
• Troubleshooting
• FAQ
• Sourcegraph-recommended indexers
• Environment variables
• Auto-indexing configuration

Footnotes

1. Supported for any language with a SCIP indexer. ↩