Code navigation

only available in a paid plan. Please activate a license key to use this feature.

Code navigation allows you to jump between symbol definition and references when viewing source files in Sourcebot. This feature is enabled automatically when a valid license key is present and works with all popular programming languages.

Features

Feature	Description
Hover popover	Hovering over a symbol reveals the symbol’s definition signature as a inline preview.
Go to definition	Clicking the “go to definition” button in the popover or clicking the symbol name navigates to the symbol’s definition.
Find references	Clicking the “find all references” button in the popover lists all references in the explore panel.
Explore panel	Lists all references and definitions for the symbol selected in the popover.
Cross-repository navigation	You can search across all repositories by clicking the globe icon in the explore panel. By default, references and definitions are scoped to the repository where the symbol is being resolved.

How does it work?

Code navigation is search-based, meaning it uses the same code search engine and query language to estimate a symbol’s references and definitions. We refer to these estimations as “search heuristics”. We have two search heuristics to enable the following operations:

Find references

Given a symbolName, along with information about the file the symbol is contained within (git_revision, and language), runs the following search:

\\b{symbolName}\\b rev:{git_revision} lang:{language} case:yes

Find definitions

Given a symbolName, along with information about the file the symbol is contained within (git_revision, and language), runs the following search:

sym:\\b{symbolName}\\b rev:{git_revision} lang:{language}

Note that the sym: prefix is used to filter the search by symbol definitions. These are created at index time by universal ctags.