rizsotto/Bear

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

6452 stars · 369 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Bear is a command-line tool that generates a JSON compilation database (compile_commands.) for C and C++ projects by intercepting compiler invocations during a build. It works with any build system, including ones that cannot export the database themselves, and can also parse dry-run output or build logs.

Use cases

• generate compile_commands. for a make or autotools project
• get clangd autocomplete and diagnostics working on a C++ codebase
• create a compilation database without modifying the build system
• capture compiler flags for embedded or cross-compiled toolchains
• build a compilation database from a CI build log or make -n dry-run output
• index a third-party C project I am just exploring

When to choose

• your build system (Make, autotools, custom scripts) cannot emit compile_commands.
• you cannot or do not want to modify the build
• you use unusual toolchains like cross-compilers, ccache, distcc, CUDA, or MPI wrappers
• you only have a build log or dry-run output instead of a runnable build

When to avoid

• your project uses CMake, Meson, or Bazel, which can export the database natively
• you are not working with C or C++ code
• you need a GUI or IDE-integrated indexing solution rather than a CLI tool

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

developer-tools build-tool compiler parser developer-tools compilers cli cross-platform compilation-database compile-commands- clang clangd c-cpp build-interception command-line linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="rizsotto/Bear")