Sloc Cloc and Code (scc)

scc powers searchcode.com — structured code intelligence over any repo, built for AI agents.

A tool similar to cloc, sloccount and tokei. For counting the lines of code, blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages.

Goal is to be the fastest code counter possible, but also perform COCOMO calculation like sloccount, LOCOMO estimation for LLM-based development costs, estimate code complexity similar to cyclomatic complexity calculators and produce unique lines of code or DRYness metrics. In short one tool to rule them all.

Also it has a very short name which is easy to type scc.

If you don't like sloc cloc and code feel free to use the name Succinct Code Counter.

Licensed under MIT licence.

Table of Contents

• Install
• Background
• Pitch
• Usage
• Configuration Files
• Complexity Estimates
• Unique Lines of Code (ULOC)
• COCOMO
• LOCOMO
• Git Insight Reports
• HTML Report
• Output Formats
• Performance
• Development
• MCP Server Mode
• Adding/Modifying Languages
• Issues
• Badges
• Language Support
• Citation

scc for Teams & Enterprise

While scc will always be a free and open tool for individual developers, companies and businesses, we are exploring an enhanced version designed for teams and businesses. scc Enterprise will build on the core scc engine to provide historical analysis, team-level dashboards, and policy enforcement to help engineering leaders track code health, manage technical debt, and forecast project costs.

We are currently gathering interest for a private beta. If you want to visualize your codebase's evolution, integrate quality gates into your CI/CD pipeline, and get a big-picture view across all your projects, sign up for the early access list here

Install

Go Install

You can install scc by using the standard go toolchain.

To install the latest stable version of scc:

go install github.com/boyter/scc/v3@latest

To install a development version:

go install github.com/boyter/scc/v3@master

Note that scc needs go version >= 1.25.

Snap

A snap install exists thanks to Ricardo.

$ sudo snap install scc

NB Snap installed applications cannot run outside of /home https://askubuntu.com/questions/930437/permission-denied-error-when-running-apps-installed-as-snap-packages-ubuntu-17 so you may encounter issues if you use snap and attempt to run outside this directory.

Homebrew

Or if you have Homebrew installed

$ brew install scc

Fedora

Fedora Linux users can use a COPR repository:

$ sudo dnf copr enable lihaohong/scc && sudo dnf install scc

MacPorts

On macOS, you can also install via MacPorts

$ sudo port install scc

Scoop

Or if you are using Scoop on Windows

$ scoop install scc

Chocolatey

Or if you are using Chocolatey on Windows

$ choco install scc

WinGet

Or if you are using WinGet on Windows

winget install --id benboyter.scc --source winget

FreeBSD

On FreeBSD, scc is available as a package

$ pkg install scc

Or, if you prefer to build from source, you can use the ports tree

$ cd /usr/ports/devel/scc && make install clean

Run in Docker

Go to the directory you want to run scc from.

Run the command below to run the latest release of scc on your current working directory:

docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/pwd:ro" --network none ghcr.io/boyter/scc:master scc /pwd

Manual

Binaries for Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS for both i386 and x86_64 machines are available from the releases page.

GitLab

https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2023/02/15/code-counting-in-gitlab/

Other

If you would like to assist with getting scc added into apt/chocolatey/etc... please submit a PR or at least raise an issue with instructions.

Background

Read all about how it came to be along with performance benchmarks,

• https://boyter.org/posts/sloc-cloc-code/
• https://boyter.org/posts/why-count-lines-of-code/
• https://boyter.org/posts/sloc-cloc-code-revisited/
• https://boyter.org/posts/sloc-cloc-code-performance/
• https://boyter.org/posts/sloc-cloc-code-performance-update/

Some reviews of scc

• https://nickmchardy.com/2018/10/counting-lines-of-code-in-koi-cms.html
• https://www.feliciano.tech/blog/determine-source-code-size-and-complexity-with-scc/
• https://metaredux.com/posts/2019/12/13/counting-lines.html

Setting up scc in GitLab

• https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2023/02/15/code-counting-in-gitlab/

A talk given at the first GopherCon AU about scc (press S to see speaker notes)

• https://boyter.org/static/gophercon-syd-presentation/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd-sjoy3GZo

For performance see the Performance section

Other similar projects,

• SLOCCount the original sloc counter
• cloc, inspired by SLOCCount; implemented in Perl for portability
• gocloc a sloc counter in Go inspired by tokei
• loc rust implementation similar to tokei but often faster
• loccount Go implementation written and maintained by ESR
• polyglot ATS sloc counter
• tokei fast, accurate and written in rust
• sloc coffeescript code counter
• stto new Go code counter with a focus on performance

Interesting reading about other code counting projects tokei, loc, polyglot and loccount

• https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/59bm3t/a_fast_cloc_replacement_in_rust/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/82k9iy/loc_count_lines_of_code_quickly/
• http://blog.vmchale.com/article/polyglot-comparisons
• http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8270

Further reading about processing files on the disk performance

• https://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/

Using scc to process 40 TB of files from GitHub/Bitbucket/GitLab

• https://boyter.org/posts/an-informal-survey-of-10-million-github-bitbucket-gitlab-projects/

Pitch

Why use scc?

• It is very fast and gets faster the more CPU you throw at it
• Accurate
• Works very well across multiple platforms without slowdown (Windows, Linux, macOS)
• Large language support
• Can ignore duplicate files
• Has complexity estimations
• You need to tell the difference between Coq and Verilog in the same directory
• cloc yaml output support so potentially a drop in replacement for some users
• Can identify or ignore minified files
• Able to identify many #! files ADVANCED! https://github.com/boyter/scc/issues/115
• Can ignore large files by lines or bytes
• Can calculate the ULOC or unique lines of code by file, language or project
• Supports multiple output formats for integration, CSV, SQL, JSON, HTML and more

Why not use scc?

• You don't like Go for some reason
• It cannot count D source with different nested multi-line comments correctly https://github.com/boyter/scc/issues/27

Differences

There are some important differences between scc and other tools that are out there. Here are a few important ones for you to consider.

Blank lines inside comments are counted as comments. While the line is technically blank the decision was made that once in a comment everything there should be considered a comment until that comment is ended. As such the following,

/* blank lines follow


*/

Would be counted as 4 lines of comments. This is noticeable when comparing scc's output to other tools on large repositories.

scc is able to count verbatim strings correctly. For example in C# the following,

private const string BasePath = @"a:\";
// The below is returned to the user as a version
private const string Version = "1.0.0";

Because of the prefixed @ this string ends at the trailing " by ignoring the escape character \ and as such should be counted as 2 code lines and 1 comment. Some tools are unable to deal with this and instead count up to the "1.0.0" as a string which can cause the middle comment to be counted as code rather than a comment.

scc will also tell you the number of bytes it has processed (for most output formats) allowing you to estimate the cost of running some static analysis tools.

Usage

Command line usage of scc is designed to be as simple as possible. Full details can be found in scc --help or scc -h. Note that the below reflects the state of master not a release, as such features listed below may be missing from your installation.

$ scc -h
Sloc, Cloc and Code. Count lines of code in a directory with complexity estimation.
Version 4.0.0 (beta)
Ben Boyter <ben@boyter.org> + Contributors

Usage:
  scc [flags] [files or directories]

Examples:
  Count the current directory:
    scc

  Count a specific folder or file:
    scc myproject/
    scc main.go

  Count several paths at once:
    scc src/ docs/ README.md

  Show a per-file breakdown instead of the per-language summary:
    scc --by-file

  Output as CSV or JSON (e.g. for further processing):
    scc --format csv
    scc --format json -o counts.json

  Count an unrecognised extension as a known language:
    scc --count-as jsp:html

  Count files matching a path pattern as a new category (glob by default):
    scc --count-as-pattern '*_spec.rb:Ruby Spec:Ruby'

  Generate a self-contained HTML infographic report:
    scc --report
    scc --report=out.html --report-title "myrepo" --report-skip cocomo

  Use a project config file (./.sccconfig) or a global one (precedence: global < project < CLI):
    export SCC_CONFIG_PATH=~/.sccconfig
    scc --config team.sccconfig

Flags:
      --avg-wage int                        average wage value used for basic COCOMO calculation (default 56286)
      --binary                              disable binary file detection
      --buckets int                         time-bucket resolution for the git timeline reports (default 60) (default 60)
      --by-author                           render the author rollup report (bus factor and last-toucher attribution over recent git history)
      --by-file                             display output for every file
  -m, --character                           calculate max and mean characters per line
      --ci                                  enable CI output settings