Hound
Hound is a free source code search engine for indexing repositories and searching their contents. Its Go backend maintains an index for each repository, while a React frontend provides a web interface and a minimal API. Search uses regular expressions with a trigram index. Hound supports Git, Mercurial, SVN, Bazaar, and local repositories; private repositories can be indexed from local directories or through file:// and SSH-style URLs. It checks configured repository locations for updates every 30 seconds by default, with an interval that can be changed for each repository. You can build Hound from source or run its Docker image; the web interface defaults to http://localhost:6080. Plugins are available for Sublime Text, Vim, Emacs, and Visual Studio Code. Hound is tested on macOS and CentOS and is intended for Unix-like systems; Windows is not supported. Hound does not provide TLS itself, and is commonly run behind Apache or nginx. It is distributed under the MIT license; the latest listed release is v0.7.1, published in May 2023.
Who it is for
Hound suits developers and teams that need to search code across repositories, including private ones. Its editor plugins and API also suit workflows that use those tools.
What is good
- Searches with regular expressions and a trigram index
- Supports five version-control systems and local repositories
- Indexes private repositories through local, file, or SSH access
- Offers plugins for four editors
- Free and distributed under the MIT license
What to know first
- Windows is not supported
- Hound does not provide TLS itself
- The latest listed release is v0.7.1 from May 2023
Verdict
Hound combines repository indexing with regex search and offers several ways to connect it to existing developer workflows. Account for its Windows and TLS limitations when planning a deployment.
Compared on code search tools
- Free plan
- Yes
