Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

GitHub

277.2K
241.4K
+ 1
10.3K
Sourcegraph

98
123
+ 1
8
Add tool

GitHub vs Sourcegraph: What are the differences?

Introduction

GitHub and Sourcegraph are both tools used by developers for managing and exploring code repositories. While they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between the two platforms. This article will highlight six key differences between GitHub and Sourcegraph in a concise manner.

  1. User Interface and Navigation: GitHub is primarily a web-based platform that provides an intuitive user interface for managing repositories, creating issues, and collaborating with other developers. On the other hand, Sourcegraph focuses primarily on code exploration and search capabilities, offering a more developer-centric interface optimized for code discovery and understanding.

  2. Code Search Capabilities: GitHub offers basic code search functionality, allowing users to search within the codebase of a specific repository. Sourcegraph, however, takes code search to the next level by indexing and searching across multiple repositories, even those not hosted on GitHub. It provides powerful search features like filters, regular expressions, and code intelligence to enhance code search efficiency and productivity.

  3. Code Intelligence and Analysis: Sourcegraph goes beyond code search and offers advanced code intelligence and analysis features. It provides language-aware code intelligence, allowing developers to navigate code using jump-to-definition and find-references functionalities, making it easier to understand complex codebases. GitHub lacks such comprehensive code intelligence capabilities.

  4. Integration with Development Tools: While both GitHub and Sourcegraph provide integrations with popular development tools, there is a difference in their scope and functionality. GitHub integrates well with development workflows and offers plugins and extensions for various tools like IDEs, continuous integration systems, and project management platforms. Sourcegraph, on the other hand, provides extensive integration capabilities by offering browser extensions, plugins, and editor integrations like Visual Studio Code, enabling seamless code navigation and searching.

  5. Deployment Options: GitHub is a cloud-based platform that hosts repositories on its servers, providing an easy-to-use and accessible environment. Sourcegraph, on the other hand, offers both cloud-hosted and self-hosted options, allowing organizations to have more control over their code and data. This flexibility in deployment options makes Sourcegraph a preferred choice for security-conscious organizations or enterprises with specific compliance requirements.

  6. Community and Collaboration Features: GitHub has a large and active community of developers, making it easy to collaborate and contribute to open-source projects. It provides features like pull requests, issue tracking, and discussions for seamless collaboration. While Sourcegraph offers basic collaboration features like commenting and sharing code snippets, it doesn't have the extensive community and collaboration ecosystem that GitHub offers.

In Summary: GitHub is a web-based platform with an intuitive user interface, basic code search, and a robust community for collaboration. Sourcegraph, on the other hand, is a developer-centric tool that focuses on code exploration, search capabilities, advanced code intelligence, and analysis. It offers more powerful code search, extensive integration options, and the flexibility of deployment options.

Decisions about GitHub and Sourcegraph
Weverton Timoteo

Do you review your Pull/Merge Request before assigning Reviewers?

If you work in a team opening a Pull Request (or Merge Request) looks appropriate. However, have you ever thought about opening a Pull/Merge Request when working by yourself? Here's a checklist of things you can review in your own:

  • Pick the correct target branch
  • Make Drafts explicit
  • Name things properly
  • Ask help for tools
  • Remove the noise
  • Fetch necessary data
  • Understand Mergeability
  • Pass the message
  • Add screenshots
  • Be found in the future
  • Comment inline in your changes

Read the blog post for more detailed explanation for each item :D

What else do you review before asking for code review?

See more
Weverton Timoteo

Using an inclusive language is crucial for fostering a diverse culture. Git has changed the naming conventions to be more language-inclusive, and so you should change. Our development tools, like GitHub and GitLab, already supports the change.

SourceLevel deals very nicely with repositories that changed the master branch to a more appropriate word. Besides, you can use the grep linter the look for exclusive terms contained in the source code.

As the inclusive language gap may happen in other aspects of our lives, have you already thought about them?

See more
Weverton Timoteo

One of the magic tricks git performs is the ability to rewrite log history. You can do it in many ways, but git rebase -i is the one I most use. With this command, It’s possible to switch commits order, remove a commit, squash two or more commits, or edit, for instance.

It’s particularly useful to run it before opening a pull request. It allows developers to “clean up” the mess and organize commits before submitting to review. If you follow the practice 3 and 4, then the list of commits should look very similar to a task list. It should reveal the rationale you had, telling the story of how you end up with that final code.

See more
Kamaleshwar BN
Senior Software Engineer at Pulley · | 8 upvotes · 650.1K views

Out of most of the VCS solutions out there, we found Gitlab was the most feature complete with a free community edition. Their DevSecops offering is also a very robust solution. Gitlab CI/CD was quite easy to setup and the direct integration with your VCS + CI/CD is also a bonus. Out of the box integration with major cloud providers, alerting through instant messages etc. are all extremely convenient. We push our CI/CD updates to MS Teams.

See more

Gitlab as A LOT of features that GitHub and Azure DevOps are missing. Even if both GH and Azure are backed by Microsoft, GitLab being open source has a faster upgrade rate and the hosted by gitlab.com solution seems more appealing than anything else! Quick win: the UI is way better and the Pipeline is way easier to setup on GitLab!

See more
Nazar Atamaniuk
Shared insights
on
DeployPlaceDeployPlaceGitHubGitHubGitLabGitLab

At DeployPlace we use self-hosted GitLab, we have chosen GitLab as most of us are familiar with it. We are happy with all features GitLab provides, I can’t imagine our life without integrated GitLab CI. Another important feature for us is integrated code review tool, we use it every day, we use merge requests, code reviews, branching. To be honest, most of us have GitHub accounts as well, we like to contribute in open source, and we want to be a part of the tech community, but lack of solutions from GitHub in the area of CI doesn’t let us chose it for our projects.

See more
Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of GitHub
Pros of Sourcegraph
  • 1.8K
    Open source friendly
  • 1.5K
    Easy source control
  • 1.3K
    Nice UI
  • 1.1K
    Great for team collaboration
  • 867
    Easy setup
  • 504
    Issue tracker
  • 486
    Great community
  • 482
    Remote team collaboration
  • 451
    Great way to share
  • 442
    Pull request and features planning
  • 147
    Just works
  • 132
    Integrated in many tools
  • 121
    Free Public Repos
  • 116
    Github Gists
  • 112
    Github pages
  • 83
    Easy to find repos
  • 62
    Open source
  • 60
    It's free
  • 60
    Easy to find projects
  • 56
    Network effect
  • 49
    Extensive API
  • 43
    Organizations
  • 42
    Branching
  • 34
    Developer Profiles
  • 32
    Git Powered Wikis
  • 30
    Great for collaboration
  • 24
    It's fun
  • 23
    Clean interface and good integrations
  • 22
    Community SDK involvement
  • 20
    Learn from others source code
  • 16
    Because: Git
  • 14
    It integrates directly with Azure
  • 10
    Newsfeed
  • 10
    Standard in Open Source collab
  • 8
    Fast
  • 8
    It integrates directly with Hipchat
  • 8
    Beautiful user experience
  • 7
    Easy to discover new code libraries
  • 6
    Smooth integration
  • 6
    Cloud SCM
  • 6
    Nice API
  • 6
    Graphs
  • 6
    Integrations
  • 6
    It's awesome
  • 5
    Quick Onboarding
  • 5
    Remarkable uptime
  • 5
    CI Integration
  • 5
    Hands down best online Git service available
  • 5
    Reliable
  • 4
    Free HTML hosting
  • 4
    Version Control
  • 4
    Simple but powerful
  • 4
    Unlimited Public Repos at no cost
  • 4
    Security options
  • 4
    Loved by developers
  • 4
    Uses GIT
  • 4
    Easy to use and collaborate with others
  • 3
    IAM
  • 3
    Nice to use
  • 3
    Ci
  • 3
    Easy deployment via SSH
  • 2
    Good tools support
  • 2
    Leads the copycats
  • 2
    Free private repos
  • 2
    Free HTML hostings
  • 2
    Easy and efficient maintainance of the projects
  • 2
    Beautiful
  • 2
    Never dethroned
  • 2
    IAM integration
  • 2
    Very Easy to Use
  • 2
    Easy to use
  • 2
    All in one development service
  • 2
    Self Hosted
  • 2
    Issues tracker
  • 2
    Easy source control and everything is backed up
  • 1
    Profound
  • 4
    Understand the connections between code components
  • 4
    Discover why code works the way it does

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of GitHub
Cons of Sourcegraph
  • 53
    Owned by micrcosoft
  • 37
    Expensive for lone developers that want private repos
  • 15
    Relatively slow product/feature release cadence
  • 10
    API scoping could be better
  • 8
    Only 3 collaborators for private repos
  • 3
    Limited featureset for issue management
  • 2
    GitHub Packages does not support SNAPSHOT versions
  • 2
    Does not have a graph for showing history like git lens
  • 1
    No multilingual interface
  • 1
    Takes a long time to commit
  • 1
    Expensive
    Be the first to leave a con

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is GitHub?

    GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.

    What is Sourcegraph?

    Sourcegraph is a universal code search tool that lets you find and fix things across ALL your code -- any code host, any repo, any language. Stay in flow and find your answers quickly with smart filters, and more.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    Jobs that mention GitHub and Sourcegraph as a desired skillset
    What companies use GitHub?
    What companies use Sourcegraph?
    See which teams inside your own company are using GitHub or Sourcegraph.
    Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with GitHub?
    What tools integrate with Sourcegraph?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    Blog Posts

    Dec 8 2020 at 5:50PM

    DigitalOcean

    GitHubMySQLPostgreSQL+11
    2
    2352
    GitHubOptimizelySegment+3
    2
    1170
    Mar 18 2020 at 9:12AM

    LaunchDarkly

    GitHubLaunchDarkly+2
    7
    1103
    JavaScriptGitHubReact+12
    5
    4121
    GitHubDockerReact+17
    40
    36155
    What are some alternatives to GitHub and Sourcegraph?
    GitLab
    GitLab offers git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds and wikis. Enterprises install GitLab on-premise and connect it with LDAP and Active Directory servers for secure authentication and authorization. A single GitLab server can handle more than 25,000 users but it is also possible to create a high availability setup with multiple active servers.
    Bitbucket
    Bitbucket gives teams one place to plan projects, collaborate on code, test and deploy, all with free private Git repositories. Teams choose Bitbucket because it has a superior Jira integration, built-in CI/CD, & is free for up to 5 users.
    AWS CodeCommit
    CodeCommit eliminates the need to operate your own source control system or worry about scaling its infrastructure. You can use CodeCommit to securely store anything from source code to binaries, and it works seamlessly with your existing Git tools.
    Git
    Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
    SVN (Subversion)
    Subversion exists to be universally recognized and adopted as an open-source, centralized version control system characterized by its reliability as a safe haven for valuable data; the simplicity of its model and usage; and its ability to support the needs of a wide variety of users and projects, from individuals to large-scale enterprise operations.
    See all alternatives