feat(search): support code search by zoekt

[adlternative]

Abstract

Zoekt is an open-source search engine specifically designed for code search, utilizing 3-gram indexing for efficient segmentation. By replacing Elasticsearch/Bleve with Zoekt, it provides Gitea with precise code search capabilities and support for regular expression searches.

Motivation

The existing code search functionality is implemented using Elasticsearch/bleve. Although Elasticsearch/bleve excels in general search domains, its disadvantages in code search are obvious:

1. Unable to support precise match searches, for example, when punctuation marks appear in the search criteria.
2. Unable to easily support regex match searches.

Proposal

Goals

Support precise substring searches
Support regex searches

Non-Goals

Support multi-branch searches
Support code symbol syntax searches

Competitive Product Analysis

Platform	Search Engine	Supports Regex Search	Supports Full Repository Search
GitHub	Blackbird (Proprietary)	✓	✓
GitLab	Elasticsearch / Zoekt	✓	✓
grep.app	Closed Source	✓	✓
Sourcegraph	Zoekt	✓	✓
Gitea(us)	Elasticsearch or Bleve	✗	✗

Design

Index

Since Zoekt is written in Golang, its API can be directly integrated through its Go package using indexBuilder.Add() and indexBuilder.MarkFileAsChangedOrRemoved() to add or remove indexed files. The fundamental processes for implementing full and incremental repository indexing in Zoekt do not differ significantly from those in Elasticsearch (ES) or Bleve.

Search

We can use shards.NewDirectorySearcher() or shards.NewDirectorySearcherFast() to build a searcher for searching. The search modes will support:

• exact – Complete match of any content (including punctuation)

• words – Split by spaces into multiple search conditions and perform an OR query

• regexp – Regular expression search

• zoekt – Using the Zoekt search syntax

Since the search is currently limited to a single repository, we will retrieve all the content first and then handle pagination.

Use Method

enable this in app.ini

[indexer]
REPO_INDEXER_TYPE = zoekt
REPO_INDEXER_ENABLED = true
REPO_INDEXER_PATH = indexers/repos.zoekt

Resource Usage

Building the index in Zoekt requires 1.2 times the corpus size in RAM, and the index storage size is about three times the corpus size. Maybe we should expose some of Zoekt's internal Prometheus metrics in the future?

Exists Issues

• (solved) zoekt cannot build on i386: Bug: Cannot build on 32-bit system sourcegraph/zoekt#935
• zoekt cannot build on windows: Fully revert windows support sourcegraph/zoekt#909
• setting.Indexer.IncludePatterns and setting.Indexer.ExcludePatterns use glob syntax, whereas Zoekt itself only supports regular expressions (regexp). It may be necessary to refactor IncludePatterns and ExcludePatterns to support regular expressions.

Try to support #33702

[wxiaoguang]

There are already so many search engines builtin into Gitea. Many of them have various bugs.

So the questions are:

1. Will more search engines be added into Gitea to make Gitea have plenty of builtin search engines?
2. Will the search engines become unmaintained and the bugs will never be fixed?

[hiifong]

To be honest I prefer this zoekt search engine compared to the existing search engine

[lunny]

maybe this can replace bleve but we need some comparsion tests.

[wxiaoguang]

To be honest I prefer this zoekt search engine compared to the existing search engine

That's understandable. So a few months later, another one feels "yoekt" is better, then introduce "yoekt", then a few months later, someone feels "xoekt" is better, then introduce "xoekt", and then "woekt", "voekt", "uoekt" ... "coekt", "boekt", "aoekt". Then Gitea contains all search engines on the internet.

---

I do not mean objection to introduce improvements. But actually it needs to:

1. Clarify the existing problems & fix existing problems.
2. Remove unnecessary search engine before introducing new ones.

So a clear roadmap about the "search engine plan" is necessary.

[adlternative]

There are already so many search engines builtin into Gitea. Many of them have various bugs.

So the questions are:

1. Will more search engines be added into Gitea to make Gitea have plenty of builtin search engines?

In my opinion, supporting multiple search engines is a good thing, as users may have different needs. Even GitLab now supports both ES and Zoekt search engines. see https://docs.gitlab.com/user/search

2. Will the search engines become unmaintained and the bugs will never be fixed?

I'm not too worried about this; Gitea should have good community maintenance. It might be because the code search functionality is not exposed by default, so many bugs haven't been discovered.

[wxiaoguang]

In my opinion, supporting multiple search engines is a good thing, as users may have different needs. Even GitLab now supports both ES and Zoekt search engines. see https://docs.gitlab.com/user/search
I'm not too worried about this; Gitea should have good community maintenance. It might be because the code search functionality is not exposed by default, so many bugs haven't been discovered.

Well, do you know how many search engines are in Gitea now? And what longstanding bugs do they have? https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20code%20search

And some bugs didn't get fixed in months, for example: "Search Functionality Issues with Bleve Engine #31565", I don't see "good community maintenance"

[adlternative]

To be honest I prefer this zoekt search engine compared to the existing search engine

That's understandable. So a few months later, another one feels "yoekt" is better, then introduce "yoekt", then a few months later, someone feels "xoekt" is better, then introduce "xoekt", and then "woekt", "voekt", "uoekt" ... "coekt", "boekt", "aoekt". Then Gitea contains all search engines on the internet.

you don't need to worry about this: zoekt is a popular code search engine, currently used by code platforms like Gerrit, Sourcegraph, and GitLab, wrote by Gerrit author, and maintained by Sourcegraph. Zoekt has advantages that traditional search engines (like ES) do not possess: support for regex matching, substring search, etc. I don't think any new open-source code search engines will be able to replace it in the short term.

I do not mean objection to introduce improvements. But actually it needs to:

1. Clarify the existing problems & fix existing problems.
2. Remove unnecessary search engine before introducing new ones.

So a clear roadmap about the "search engine plan" is necessary.

You are right, where should the roadmap be written? I don't have experience with this. I will supplement its documentation when the zoekt functionality is more complete

[wxiaoguang]

I don't think any new open-source code search engines will be able to replace it in the short term.

Yep, if zoekt wins, we need to drop some others.

[adlternative]

In my opinion, supporting multiple search engines is a good thing, as users may have different needs. Even GitLab now supports both ES and Zoekt search engines. see https://docs.gitlab.com/user/search
I'm not too worried about this; Gitea should have good community maintenance. It might be because the code search functionality is not exposed by default, so many bugs haven't been discovered.

Well, do you know how many search engines are in Gitea now? And what longstanding bugs do they have? https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20code%20search

And some bugs didn't get fixed in months, for example: "Search Functionality Issues with Bleve Engine #31565", I don't see "good community maintenance"

Sure, it's regrettable that this part of the content is unmaintained. However, for the zoekt code search, I can commit to maintaining it thoroughly.

[adlternative]

I don't think any new open-source code search engines will be able to replace it in the short term.

Yep, if zoekt wins, we need to drop some others.

Yeah, I hope this can be divided into at least two steps:

1. Support zoekt
2. Deprecate other search engines

Zoekt may also have some issues, as GitLab has not completely deprecated ES and fully switched to Zoekt...

[wxiaoguang]

To make the code clear, we need to refactor the related code first: Refactor issue & code search #33860

Each "indexer" should provide the "search modes" they support by themselves. And we need to remove the "fuzzy" search for code.

[adlternative]

Please note that I have many other commitments over the next two weeks and may only be able to dedicate time to this MR in a couple of weeks

[adlternative]

@lunny I've pushed a new version, are there any other issues?

[lunny]

The comment at https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/33850/changes#r2638055239 still need to be resolved.

[adlternative]

The comment at https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/33850/changes#r2638055239 still need to be resolved.

Alright, it looks like this part shouldn't be very important, I've removed this section of comment.

[lunny]

It seems there is a conflict which Github didn't catch.

# code.gitea.io/gitea/modules/indexer/code/zoekt
modules/indexer/code/zoekt/zoekt.go:96:90: undefined: git.WriteCloserError
modules/indexer/code/zoekt/zoekt.go:171:24: undefined: git.NewBatch

[adlternative]

# code.gitea.io/gitea/modules/indexer/code/zoekt
modules/indexer/code/zoekt/zoekt.go:96:90: undefined: git.WriteCloserError
modules/indexer/code/zoekt/zoekt.go:171:24: undefined: git.NewBatch

I don't have any leads right now, at what stage did this occur? During window compile? Or during linting?

[lunny]

# code.gitea.io/gitea/modules/indexer/code/zoekt
modules/indexer/code/zoekt/zoekt.go:96:90: undefined: git.WriteCloserError
modules/indexer/code/zoekt/zoekt.go:171:24: undefined: git.NewBatch

I don't have any leads right now, at what stage did this occur? During window compile? Or during linting?

Please take a look at the CI error.

[lunny]

The languages stats now is order randomly. It should sort by searched files number.

[adlternative]

The languages stats now is order randomly. It should sort by searched files number.

Good suggestion, it has been corrected to sort from most to least.

[adlternative]

Just pinging to check the status of this PR. Any changes needed?

@lunny

[lunny]

Please update the branch the catfile needs some updates.