Introduction to code intelligence
Code intelligence is enabled by Sourcegraph extensions and provides users with two different types of code intelligence: search-based and precise.
Search-based code intelligence works out of the box with all of the most popular programming languages via extensions.
Precise code intelligence is an opt-in feature that is enabled in your admin settings and requires you to upload LSIF data for each repository to your Sourcegraph instance. Once setup is complete on Sourcegraph, precise code intelligence is available for use across popular development tools:
- On the Sourcegraph web UI
- On code files on your code host, via integrations
- On diffs in your code review tool, via integrations
- Via the Sourcegraph API
Search-based vs. precise
Search-based code intelligence is available by default on all Sourcegraph instances and provides fuzzy code intelligence using a combination of ctags and search. It is great for immediate access to code intelligence features, but due to its dependence on text-based search its results are considered imprecise.
Precise code intelligence returns metadata from a knowledge graph that is generated through code analysis. The precomputation step is used to generate the graph results in lookups that are fast and have a high degree of accuracy.
To learn more about how to work with each type of code intelligence, visit the search-based and precise sections