Bring back sort:indexed for code searches

[svennergr]

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On March 10th you informed public that you'll deprecate the sort parameter for code searches: https://github.blog/changelog/2023-03-10-changes-to-the-code-search-api/

I think this was done quite quickly - only 30 days after the deprecation notice.

Are there any plans to bring this feature back/to the new search API?

I think this is a very commonly used feature, which helps users to see most recent code changes containing some search term in a repo.

[clayne]

Yes, please bring this back. It makes it a total hassle to search for only recently updated repositories meaning both the client and server side are having to do excessive amounts of work and data transfer when the client code doesn't even want that.

Example: 10000 results, one only cares about the last 100 recently updated. With prior model this was easy. With current it forces the client to fetch the entire result set and then post-filter. Total regression.

[hifiveszu]

can't agree more

[carcabot]

Wtf, you have just broke the entire GitHub usability without a concrete search method like sorting code by date. Competition is waiting for such mistakes.

[nashbuddhav]

Must have feature

[mitz88]

indeed a very common and useful feature that must be present !

[Chris000117]

Good Advice

[Damian89]

This is one of the worst decisions github made... I am using this feature extensively. If they drop it, code search is just garbage search.

[deenrookie]

This is one of the worst decisions github made... I am using this feature extensively. If they drop it, code search is just garbage search.

I can't agree more

[Milan-960]

Indeed, I agree! It has also removed Sort by: From the code search!

[Aidils60]

super angreeee

[Marius-Ar]

Yes, made CS almost unusable 😢

[DarkReaperBoy]

yeah i need to find shadowsocks config

[kero3009destiny]

Maybe openly admitting to misuse the feature won't help bring it back.

[Damian89]

Not that they removed a useful feature - the new version outputs no data... besides that... I dont want to see 10 year old code as example for anything. this sucks massively... but I dont think we will see this feature again, Microsoft doesnt care.

[alexanderbkl]

I'm using it, it's incredibly awful that they removed that feature.

[trompx]

Besides not being able to sort by recency, now if you want to see when the file has been updated, you have to hover the filename.
For some searches, I want to see how developers are solving problems nowadays, not 10 years ago.
No more number of matching files per language -> very bad for discoverability.
Not possible to filter by multiple languages anymore.
Such a downgrade. That's so annoying and make it totally unusable.

[colinwm]

Everyone, thanks for the feedback. We've definitely heard that sorting by date is a feature many people miss from the old code search.

Unfortunately due to the way our new code search index works (which you can read about in some detail in this blog post), implementing sorting by recency is complex.

We are thinking about way to make this work in the new code search system, but don't have a date for when it will be possible. I'll update again here once we have a more concrete plan.

[dklenowski]

don't get it? your not "sorting by recency" on the whole corpus, just the results.

[uBadRequest]

Hopefully you guys are saving lots of money with the drop in people making searches.😂 I wish I could revert back to old code search.

[Abd3lh4di]

Please turn on the old search feature again, Github became useless to me as I only get result from very old code. please do something!

[anthonyalayo]

Can we get an update?

[johndpope]

@colinwm - can you maybe hire some people that could help ?
maybe ask chatgpt? maybe open source the search feature?
in sql there's a field "sort by". jeah, that should do it. just use this.

[sixgodfan]

Please allow us to revert to the old search in the meantime +1

[serdkc]

please enable old search .

[Baiyuetribe]

Please turn on the old search feature again

[Jamescordon111]

Please make a way for us to use old functionality of search. As my works is immensely effected by that. It's an humble request 🙏

[dev-oneclick]

Please give us the option to use the old version, this is disturbing a lot, the user can have the option of which of the two models to use.

[unprofitable]

+1, you cant do anything without searching...

[franz101]

At least make it filterable by date

[enriqueg]

Please bring the old search back. Why force everybody to use something that doesn't work and it is a UI disaster :(

[miztizm]

Please bring the power of Reddit here ;)

[bayaderpack]

This is exactly what we need to people unite

[cobavcova]

pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[vitaly-t]

A year has passed, GitHub remains castrated without this feature, what a disgrace!

[Jore]

Bumping this again. I would be forever grateful if they added this feature back.

[ypeleg]

my life would be much better if this would return

[hifiveszu]

Give it up! This discussion can be closed now.

[ohnoyoudidnt]

Giving up is not an option. This is sparta! We want our sorting back!

[lolo9393]

We want our sorting back please...

[matthewpersico]

It is almost as if people who do NOT program and making these decisions. 🤦‍♂️ https://images.app.goo.gl/ZBprA5JiMh8Pofd3A

[xiekunwhy]

The code search results now are much wores than that in about 2 years ago.

[le2Ks]

Bro, even Microsoft Windows 95 had a better search engine almost 30 years ago.

[k1tzu]

I hate that I have to dig outdated code in search results. This is a real pain Microsoft inflicted on developers.😔

[cobavcova]

Yes, that's right, did Microsoft change people or what?

[le2Ks]

That's because every company nowadays, including Microsoft, go with the DEI (Diversity, equity, and inclusion). They don't hire people based on their performance.

[yashrs]

Not that my comment is going to change anything, but please for the love of God, implement sorting by recency.

[johndpope]

I get some repos are created on github and maybe automatically indexing them causes problems for authors where they thought that the repo would be hidden because it wasn't linked to or somehow they think repo is a secret or they don't enable privacy. then results bubble that can be sensitive.
if this is the reason - solve that problem.
if it's because you want to grant access to partners so they can scan for vulnerabilities - then solve that problem. we just want sorting - that doesn't put 5 year old / out of date code in front of new code / apis.
there must be a way to do both. eg. restrict sort for repos so that they don't index in the first 30 days. make it painfully obvious that new repos are going to bubble up in search unless they make it private.
am I missing something? is there really a problem where you can't actually sort by date? I don't believe this. I can get all the results - get the dates - and order the results.

UPDATE
restrict the search results that can be sorted by repos that have been scanned and git issues raised.
if they're disclosing api keys or other nonsense - then fix that problem.

[LiteBrite82]

@benjsilverstein also submitted a very helpful use case last July. My predecessor had some useful insight to the root cause of the indexing issue. This same thread, July 5, 2023

[cobavcova]

I found a bug, when I search for something, the results don't show anything, please fix it

[LiteBrite82]

I cant tell if this is a sick burn, or a real bug.

I couldn't replicate your issue, can you provide more specifics (search parameters)?

If it is indeed a sick burn; well played, I appreciate you.

[cobavcova]

this is my search

[cobavcova]

[Mistik]

Any updates when this will be fixed?

[demo20230423]

well, a year passed, still keep mess/garbage
give me back old code search!

[johndpope]

My reading is - until we give @LiteBrite82 a valid use case - he can't help us?

Do you need a bigger use case than say - searching for code that's new?
If I'm searching for a paper / code - google scholar bundles results by year. see below screenshot.
Please give us this ability to at least do this - it's painful seeing results from 6 years ago for code that is prehistoric (in the top results) and no longer relevant. We're dealing with libraries that go out of date - get superceded. eg. i'm not interested in machine learning code that's built in theano - caffe - I need results that are current.

[cobavcova]

@johndpope It's not Github. Github was for us - developers. But now Microsoft trying to make the life of developers harder for some profit because it's a for-profit company. Remind me of Disney in some way.