GritQL
Dev tools
code rewriting and migration
SHOW HN2024
280points
54comments
#232of 3,515 in 2024
Top 7%of 2024 by points
How HN took it
LovedMost comments that take a side are positive
11 positive, 14 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 2 critical, out of 29 comments about the project. Thread score +0.34.
Idea: 2 for, 1 againstExecution: 2 for, 0 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 againstPricing: 1 for, 0 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Saves time on complex migrations, e.g. OpenAI SDK 1.0 and mobx to hooks
From 2 comments
++ congratulations to the team! We've tackled some pretty gnarly migrations with GritQL and it has saved us a lot of time. We have used ts-morph in the past for similar types of…
psalv on HNthis definitly helped a tonne to migrate from openai <1.0 to 1.0
jxnlco on HN
Good design for composing simple patterns into complex migrations
From 1 comment
ast-grep is great too, we've learned a lot from it. If you like yaml, you should definitely try ast-grep. The main area GritQL shines is in taking simpler transformation patterns…
morgante on HN
Maker team is responsive and helpful
From 2 comments
Congrats to the launch! Managing tech debt is and will be an important issue in the world of AI software. I'm glad there's a company solving this. Additionally, this is something…
mlejva on HNVery happy Grit customer here. Wish I'd had this instead of jscodeshift et al back when I was doing oodles of migrations at Stripe, but glad I have it now, and very excited to…
rattray on HN
Objections
Lacks semantic type information, so type-dependent rewrites are hard
From 2 comments
Sounds like a cool tool. The ability to write rewrites as regular code fragments with metavariables feels like some ideas I've had in the past. However, it seems to me that your…
jcranmer on HNAre either of these exposed conveniently to build on? One scenario I dealt with recently was replacing a pattern that required rudimentary type resolution to apply properly.…
setr on HN
Documentation is hard to understand without complex examples
From 1 comment
Consider linking this and other complex examples in your readme, with before/after blocks to demonstrate the power of your software. I've spent the last 6 months building a…
ryanjshaw on HN
Written in a repo where C is 96.5 percent of the code by GitHub stats
From 2 comments
"a Rust CLI" - "C 96.5% Rust 1.4%" Not that I'm complaining ;) Is it a new way to market a C tool?
practicalrs on HNThe C is all generated parsers, all our actual coding is done in Rust.
morgante on HN
Requests
Support for HTML and other embedded languages
From 2 comments
This looks great! Thank you for building it. I'm looking forward to learning to use it. I'm just starting to learn about tree-sitter but my understanding is that it can also…
snthpy on HNYes, Grit does support embedded languages. Right now we support Vue syntax:…
morgante on HN
Dynamic loading of custom tree-sitter grammars
From 2 comments
I have the same question. I'm particularly interested in the SQL dialects case. Does the rewrite code also have to be syntactically correct or is that a simple text replacement…
snthpy on HN> Does the rewrite code also have to be syntactically correct or is that a simple text replacement because that's what I see as the main impediment; if I'm using the sqlite…
morgante on HN
Semantic analysis and type information
From 2 comments
apologies if this should be a discussion/issue/whatever but: Do you envision going up against CodeQL and/or <https://www.jetbrains.com/help/qodana/about-qodana.html> by making…
mdaniel on HNSounds like a cool tool. The ability to write rewrites as regular code fragments with metavariables feels like some ideas I've had in the past. However, it seems to me that your…
jcranmer on HN
Questions
How does it compare to ast-grep
From 2 comments
Congrats from ast-grep team! Nice job Morgante! GritQL shares a lot of common ground with ast-grep, which is also a code rewriter based on tree-sitter. Interested folks may…
herrington_d on HNThis looks great, thanks for building and sharing it. Interested folks may also want to check out ast-grep: https://github.com/ast-grep/ast-grep
anotherpaulg on HN
Can it translate between programming languages
From 2 comments
Can I use this to translate one language to another?
MichaelMug on HNIn theory, you could write a full transpiler in GritQL. In practice, it's not really the ideal tool for translating between languages. It does work well for cases where the…
morgante on HN
Can it handle SQL dialect conversion
From 2 comments
I have the same question. I'm particularly interested in the SQL dialects case. Does the rewrite code also have to be syntactically correct or is that a simple text replacement…
snthpy on HNIn theory, you could write a full transpiler in GritQL. In practice, it's not really the ideal tool for translating between languages. It does work well for cases where the…
morgante on HN
Alternatives named
ast-grep
From 2 comments
Congrats from ast-grep team! Nice job Morgante! GritQL shares a lot of common ground with ast-grep, which is also a code rewriter based on tree-sitter. Interested folks may…
herrington_d on HNThis looks great, thanks for building and sharing it. Interested folks may also want to check out ast-grep: https://github.com/ast-grep/ast-grep
anotherpaulg on HN
comby
From 1 comment
The first tool like this I saw was [comby](https://comby.dev/). I remember it being a bit annoying to use for small-to-medium refactors. Next time I'll try `grit` and see how it…
lightandlight on HN
jscodeshift
From 1 comment
CodeQL
From 1 comment
apologies if this should be a discussion/issue/whatever but: Do you envision going up against CodeQL and/or <https://www.jetbrains.com/help/qodana/about-qodana.html> by making…
mdaniel on HN
Qodana
From 1 comment
apologies if this should be a discussion/issue/whatever but: Do you envision going up against CodeQL and/or <https://www.jetbrains.com/help/qodana/about-qodana.html> by making…
mdaniel on HN
ts-morph
From 1 comment
++ congratulations to the team! We've tackled some pretty gnarly migrations with GritQL and it has saved us a lot of time. We have used ts-morph in the past for similar types of…
psalv on HN