SourceKitten

An adorable little framework and command line tool for interacting with SourceKit.

SourceKitten links and communicates with sourcekitd.framework to parse the Swift AST, extract comment docs for Swift or Objective-C projects, get syntax data for a Swift file and lots more!

Building SourceKitten requires Xcode 13.3 or later or a Swift 5.6 toolchain or later with the Swift Package Manager.

SourceKitten typically supports previous versions of SourceKit.

Run brew install sourcekitten.

Run swift build in the root directory of this project.

Add the following to your WORKSPACE file:

SOURCEKITTEN_VERSION = "SOME_VERSION"
SOURCEKITTEN_SHA = "SOME_SHA"
http_archive(
    name = "com_github_jpsim_sourcekitten",
    url = "https://github.com/jpsim/SourceKitten/archive/refs/tags/%s.tar.gz" % (SOURCEKITTEN_VERSION),
    sha256 = SOURCEKITTEN_SHA,
    strip_prefix = "SourceKitten-%s" % SOURCEKITTEN_VERSION
)

Then run: bazel run @com_github_jpsim_sourcekitten//:sourcekitten -- -h

Run make install in the root directory of this project.

Download and open SourceKitten.pkg from the releases tab.

Once SourceKitten is installed, you may use it from the command line.

$ sourcekitten help
OVERVIEW: An adorable little command line tool for interacting with SourceKit

USAGE: sourcekitten <subcommand>

OPTIONS:
  --version               Show the version.
  -h, --help              Show help information.

SUBCOMMANDS:
  complete                Generate code completion options
  doc                     Print Swift or Objective-C docs as JSON
  format                  Format Swift file
  index                   Index Swift file and print as JSON
  module-info             Obtain information about a Swift module and print as JSON
  request                 Run a raw SourceKit request
  structure               Print Swift structure information as JSON
  syntax                  Print Swift syntax information as JSON
  version                 Display the current version of SourceKitten

  See 'sourcekitten help <subcommand>' for detailed help.

SourceKitten searches for SourceKit in the following order:

• $XCODE_DEFAULT_TOOLCHAIN_OVERRIDE
• $TOOLCHAIN_DIR
• xcrun -find swift
• /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain
• /Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain
• ~/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain
• ~/Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain

On Linux, SourceKit is expected to be located in /usr/lib/libsourcekitdInProc.so or specified by the LINUX_SOURCEKIT_LIB_PATH environment variable.

• SwiftLint: A tool to enforce Swift style and conventions.
• Jazzy: Soulful docs for Swift & Objective-C.
• Sourcery: Meta-programming for Swift, stop writing boilerplate code.
• SwiftyMocky: Framework for mock generation.
• SourceKittenDaemon: Swift Auto Completions for any Text Editor.
• SourceDocs: Command Line Tool that generates Markdown documentation from inline source code comments.
• Cuckoo: First boilerplate-free mocking framework for Swift.
• IBAnalyzer: Find common xib and storyboard-related problems without running your app or writing unit tests.
• Taylor: Measure Swift code metrics and get reports in Xcode, Jenkins and other CI platforms.

Running sourcekitten complete --file file.swift --offset 123 or sourcekitten complete --text "0." --offset 2 will print out code completion options for the offset in the file/text provided:

[{
  "descriptionKey" : "advancedBy(n: Distance)",
  "associatedUSRs" : "s:FSi10advancedByFSiFSiSi s:FPSs21RandomAccessIndexType10advancedByuRq_S__Fq_Fqq_Ss16ForwardIndexType8Distanceq_ s:FPSs16ForwardIndexType10advancedByuRq_S__Fq_Fqq_S_8Distanceq_ s:FPSs10Strideable10advancedByuRq_S__Fq_Fqq_S_6Strideq_ s:FPSs11_Strideable10advancedByuRq_S__Fq_Fqq_S_6Strideq_",
  "kind" : "source.lang.swift.decl.function.method.instance",
  "sourcetext" : "advancedBy(<#T##n: Distance##Distance#>)",
  "context" : "source.codecompletion.context.thisclass",
  "typeName" : "Int",
  "moduleName" : "Swift",
  "name" : "advancedBy(n: Distance)"
},
{
  "descriptionKey" : "advancedBy(n: Self.Distance, limit: Self)",
  "associatedUSRs" : "s:FeRq_Ss21RandomAccessIndexType_SsS_10advancedByuRq_S__Fq_FTqq_Ss16ForwardIndexType8Distance5limitq__q_",
  "kind" : "source.lang.swift.decl.function.method.instance",
  "sourcetext" : "advancedBy(<#T##n: Self.Distance##Self.Distance#>, limit: <#T##Self#>)",
  "context" : "source.codecompletion.context.superclass",
  "typeName" : "Self",
  "moduleName" : "Swift",
  "name" : "advancedBy(n: Self.Distance, limit: Self)"
},
...
]

To use the iOS SDK, pass -sdk and -target arguments preceded by --:

sourcekitten complete --text "import UIKit ; UIColor." --offset 22 -- -target arm64-apple-ios9.0 -sdk /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS9.0.sdk

Running sourcekitten doc will pass all arguments after what is parsed to xcodebuild (or directly to the compiler, SourceKit/clang, in the --single-file mode).

1. sourcekitten doc -- -workspace SourceKitten.xcworkspace -scheme SourceKittenFramework
2. sourcekitten doc --single-file file.swift -- -j4 file.swift
3. sourcekitten doc --module-name Alamofire -- -project Alamofire.xcodeproj
4. sourcekitten doc -- -workspace Haneke.xcworkspace -scheme Haneke
5. sourcekitten doc --objc Realm/Realm.h -- -x objective-c -isysroot $(xcrun --show-sdk-path) -I $(pwd)

Running sourcekitten structure --file file.swift or sourcekitten structure --text "struct A { func b() {} }" will return a JSON array of structure information:

{
  "key.substructure" : [
    {
      "key.kind" : "source.lang.swift.decl.struct",
      "key.offset" : 0,
      "key.nameoffset" : 7,
      "key.namelength" : 1,
      "key.bodyoffset" : 10,
      "key.bodylength" : 13,
      "key.length" : 24,
      "key.substructure" : [
        {
          "key.kind" : "source.lang.swift.decl.function.method.instance",
          "key.offset" : 11,
          "key.nameoffset" : 16,
          "key.namelength" : 3,
          "key.bodyoffset" : 21,
          "key.bodylength" : 0,
          "key.length" : 11,
          "key.substructure" : [

          ],
          "key.name" : "b()"
        }
      ],
      "key.name" : "A"
    }
  ],
  "key.offset" : 0,
  "key.diagnostic_stage" : "source.diagnostic.stage.swift.parse",
  "key.length" : 24
}

Running sourcekitten syntax --file file.swift or sourcekitten syntax --text "import Foundation // Hello World" will return a JSON array of syntax highlighting information:

[
  {
    "offset" : 0,
    "length" : 6,
    "type" : "source.lang.swift.syntaxtype.keyword"
  },
  {
    "offset" : 7,
    "length" : 10,
    "type" : "source.lang.swift.syntaxtype.identifier"
  },
  {
    "offset" : 18,
    "length" : 14,
    "type" : "source.lang.swift.syntaxtype.comment"
  }
]

Running sourcekitten request --yaml [FILE|TEXT] will execute a sourcekit request with the given yaml. For example:

key.request: source.request.cursorinfo
key.sourcefile: "/tmp/foo.swift"
key.offset: 8
key.compilerargs:
  - "/tmp/foo.swift"

Most of the functionality of the sourcekitten command line tool is actually encapsulated in a framework named SourceKittenFramework.

If you’re interested in using SourceKitten as part of another tool, or perhaps extending its functionality, take a look at the SourceKittenFramework source code to see if the API fits your needs.

Note: SourceKitten is written entirely in Swift, and the SourceKittenFramework API is not designed to interface with Objective-C.

MIT licensed.