Uncomment: Tree-sitter Based Comment Removal Tool

A fast, accurate, and extensible comment removal tool that uses tree-sitter for parsing, ensuring 100% accuracy in comment identification. Originally created to clean up AI-generated code with excessive comments, it now supports any language with a tree-sitter grammar through its flexible configuration system.

Support This Project

If you find uncomment helpful, please consider sponsoring the development:

Your support helps maintain and improve this tool for the community! 🚀

Features

• 100% Accurate: Uses tree-sitter AST parsing to correctly identify comments
• No False Positives: Never removes comment-like content from strings
• Smart Preservation: Keeps important metadata, TODOs, FIXMEs, and language-specific patterns
• Parallel Processing: Multi-threaded processing for improved performance
• 306 Languages: Powered by tree-sitter-language-pack with automatic grammar downloading
• Configuration System: TOML-based configuration for project-specific settings
• Smart Init Command: Automatically generate configuration based on your project
• Fast: Leverages tree-sitter's optimized parsing
• Safe: Dry-run mode to preview changes
• Built-in Benchmarking: Performance analysis and profiling tools

Supported Languages

Built-in Languages

• Python (.py, .pyw, .pyi, .pyx, .pxd)
• JavaScript (.js, .jsx, .mjs, .cjs)
• TypeScript (.ts, .tsx, .mts, .cts, .d.ts, .d.mts, .d.cts)
• Rust (.rs)
• Go (.go)
• Java (.java)
• C (.c, .h)
• C++ (.cpp, .cc, .cxx, .hpp, .hxx)
• C# (.cs)
• Ruby (.rb, .rake, .gemspec)
• PHP (.php, .phtml)
• Elixir (.ex, .exs)
• TOML (.toml)
• JSON (.json)
• JSON with Comments (.jsonc)
• YAML (.yml, .yaml)
• HCL/Terraform (.hcl, .tf, .tfvars)
• Makefile (Makefile, .mk)
• Shell/Bash (.sh, .bash, .zsh, .bashrc, .zshrc)
• Haskell (.hs, .lhs)
• HTML (.html, .htm, .xhtml)
• CSS (.css)
• XML (.xml, .xsd, .xsl, .xslt, .svg)
• SQL (.sql)
• Kotlin (.kt, .kts)
• Swift (.swift)
• Lua (.lua)
• Nix (.nix)
• PowerShell (.ps1, .psm1, .psd1)
• Protobuf (.proto)
• INI-like configs (.ini, .cfg, .conf)
• Dockerfile (Dockerfile, Dockerfile.*)
• Scala (.scala, .sc)
• Dart (.dart)
• R (.r, .R)
• Julia (.jl)
• Zig (.zig)
• Clojure (.clj, .cljs, .cljc, .edn)
• Elm (.elm)
• Erlang (.erl, .hrl)
• Vue (.vue)
• Svelte (.svelte)
• SCSS (.scss)
• LaTeX (.tex, .sty, .cls)
• Fish (.fish)
• Perl (.pl, .pm)
• Groovy (.groovy, .gradle)
• OCaml (.ml, .mli)
• Fortran (.f90, .f95, .f03, .f08)

306 Languages Available

Powered by tree-sitter-language-pack, uncomment can process any of 306 supported languages. Languages not listed above can be added via configuration — grammars are downloaded automatically on first use.

Installation

Via Package Managers

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew tap goldziher/tap
brew install uncomment

Cargo (Rust)

cargo install uncomment

npm (Node.js)

npm install -g uncomment-cli

pip (Python)

pip install uncomment

From source

git clone https://github.com/Goldziher/uncomment.git
cd uncomment
cargo install --path .

Requirements

• For building from source: Rust 1.70+
• For npm/pip packages: Pre-built binaries are downloaded automatically

Quick Start

Run Without Installing

npx -y uncomment-cli@latest .
uvx uncomment .

Add --dry-run to either command to preview changes before writing.

Install Locally

# Generate a configuration file for your project
uncomment init

# Remove comments from files
uncomment src/

# Preview changes without modifying files
uncomment --dry-run src/

Usage

Configuration

# Generate a smart configuration based on your project
uncomment init

# Generate a comprehensive configuration with all supported languages
uncomment init --comprehensive

# Interactive configuration setup
uncomment init --interactive

# Use a custom configuration file
uncomment --config my-config.toml src/

Init Command Examples

The init command intelligently detects languages in your project:

# Smart detection - analyzes your project and includes only detected languages
$ uncomment init
Detected languages in your project:
- 150 rust files
- 89 typescript files
- 45 python files
- 12 vue files
- 8 dockerfile files

Generated .uncommentrc.toml with configurations for detected languages.

# Comprehensive mode - includes configurations for 49 built-in languages
$ uncomment init --comprehensive
Generated comprehensive configuration with all supported languages.

# Specify output location
$ uncomment init --output config/uncomment.toml

# Force overwrite existing configuration
$ uncomment init --force

Basic Usage

# Remove comments from a single file
uncomment file.py

# Preview changes without modifying files
uncomment --dry-run file.py

# Process multiple files
uncomment src/*.py

# Remove documentation comments/docstrings
uncomment --remove-doc file.py

# Remove TODO and FIXME comments
uncomment --remove-todo --remove-fixme file.py

# Add custom patterns to preserve
uncomment --ignore-patterns "HACK" --ignore-patterns "WARNING" file.py

# Process entire directory recursively
uncomment src/

# Use parallel processing with 8 threads
uncomment --threads 8 src/

Optional Benchmarking Tools

The crate ships development binaries for benchmarking and profiling, but they are gated behind the bench-tools feature so they are not installed for regular users.

• Install from crates.io with the extras:

  cargo install uncomment --features bench-tools
  

• Run locally without installing:

  cargo run --release --features bench-tools --bin benchmark -- --target /path/to/repo --iterations 3
  cargo run --release --features bench-tools --bin profile -- /path/to/repo
  

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for local development, automation hooks, and release procedures.

Default Preservation Rules

Always Preserved

• Comments containing ~keep
• TODO comments (unless --remove-todo)
• FIXME comments (unless --remove-fixme)
• Documentation comments (unless --remove-doc)

Linting Tool Directives (Always Preserved)

The tool preserves all linting and formatting directives to ensure your CI/CD pipelines and development workflows remain intact:

Go:

• //nolint, //nolint:gosec, //golangci-lint, //staticcheck, //go:generate

Python:

• # noqa, # type: ignore, # mypy:, # pyright:, # ruff:, # pylint:, # flake8:
• # fmt: off/on, # black:, # isort:, # bandit:, # pyre-ignore

JavaScript/TypeScript:

• ESLint: eslint-disable, eslint-enable, eslint-disable-next-line
• TypeScript: @ts-ignore, @ts-expect-error, @ts-nocheck, @ts-check
• Triple-slash: /// <reference, /// <amd-module, /// <amd-dependency
• Formatters: prettier-ignore, biome-ignore, deno-lint-ignore
• Coverage: v8 ignore, c8 ignore, istanbul ignore

Rust:

• Attributes: #[allow], #[deny], #[warn], #[forbid], #[cfg]
• Clippy: clippy::, #[rustfmt::skip]

Java:

• @SuppressWarnings, @SuppressFBWarnings, //noinspection, // checkstyle:

C/C++:

• // NOLINT, // NOLINTNEXTLINE, #pragma, // clang-format off/on

Shell/Bash:

• # shellcheck disable, # hadolint ignore

YAML:

• # yamllint disable/enable

HCL/Terraform:

• # tfsec:ignore, # checkov:skip, # trivy:ignore, # tflint-ignore

Ruby:

• # rubocop:disable/enable, # reek:, # standard:disable/enable

Configuration

Uncomment uses a flexible TOML-based configuration system that allows you to customize behavior for your project.

Configuration File Discovery

Uncomment searches for configuration files in the following order:

1. Command-line specified config: --config path/to/config.toml
2. .uncommentrc.toml in the current directory
3. .uncommentrc.toml in parent directories (up to git root or filesystem root)
4. ~/.config/uncomment/config.toml (global configuration)
5. Built-in defaults

Basic Configuration Example

[global]
remove_todos = false
remove_fixme = false
remove_docs = false
preserve_patterns = ["IMPORTANT", "NOTE", "WARNING"]
use_default_ignores = true
respect_gitignore = true

[languages.python]
extensions = ["py", "pyw", "pyi"]
preserve_patterns = ["noqa", "type:", "pragma:", "pylint:"]

[patterns."tests/**/*.py"]
# Keep all comments in test files
remove_todos = false
remove_fixme = false
remove_docs = false

Adding Languages via Configuration

Uncomment supports 306 languages through tree-sitter-language-pack. To add a language not in the built-in list, define it in your .uncommentrc.toml:

[languages.hare]
name = "Hare"
extensions = ["ha"]
comment_nodes = ["comment"]
preserve_patterns = ["TODO", "FIXME"]

The grammar is downloaded automatically on first use. No manual grammar configuration needed.

Configuration Merging

When multiple configuration files are found, they are merged with the following precedence (highest to lowest):

1. Command-line flags
2. Local .uncommentrc.toml files (closer to the file being processed wins)
3. Global configuration (~/.config/uncomment/config.toml)
4. Built-in defaults

Pattern-specific configurations override language configurations for matching files.

How It Works

Unlike regex-based tools, uncomment uses tree-sitter to build a proper Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) of your code. This means it understands the difference between:

• Real comments vs comment-like content in strings
• Documentation comments vs regular comments
• Inline comments vs standalone comments
• Language-specific metadata that should be preserved

Architecture

The tool is built with a modular, extensible architecture:

1. Language Registry: Manages 49 built-in languages with extensible configuration
2. tree-sitter-language-pack: Provides 306 language grammars with automatic downloading
3. Configuration System: TOML-based hierarchical configuration with merging
4. AST Visitor: Traverses the tree-sitter AST to find comments
5. Preservation Engine: Applies rules to determine what to keep
6. Output Generator: Produces clean code with comments removed

Adding New Languages

Add to your .uncommentrc.toml:

[languages.mylang]
name = "My Language"
extensions = ["ml", "mli"]
comment_nodes = ["comment"]
preserve_patterns = ["TODO", "FIXME"]

Any of the 306 languages supported by tree-sitter-language-pack will work — grammars are downloaded automatically on first use.

Git Hooks

Pre-commit

Add to your .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/Goldziher/uncomment
    rev: v2.9.0
    hooks:
      - id: uncomment

Lefthook

Add to your lefthook.yml:

pre-commit:
  commands:
    uncomment:
      run: uncomment {staged_files}
      stage_fixed: true

For both hooks, install uncomment via pip:

pip install uncomment

Performance

While slightly slower than regex-based approaches due to parsing overhead, the tool is very fast and scales well with parallel processing:

Single-threaded Performance

• Small files (<1000 lines): ~20-30ms
• Large files (>10000 lines): ~100-200ms

Parallel Processing Benchmarks

Performance scales excellently with multiple threads:

Benchmarks run on a large enterprise codebase with 5,000 mixed language files

Built-in Benchmarking

Use the built-in tools to measure performance on your specific codebase:

# Basic benchmark
benchmark --target /path/to/repo

# Detailed benchmark with multiple iterations
benchmark --target /path/to/repo --iterations 5 --threads 8

# Memory and performance profiling
profile --path /path/to/repo

The accuracy gained through AST parsing is worth the small performance cost, and parallel processing makes it suitable for even the largest codebases.

Development

Project Structure

uncomment/
├── src/               # Source code
├── tests/             # Integration tests
├── fixtures/          # Test fixtures
│   ├── languages/     # Language-specific test files
│   └── repos/         # Repository test configurations
├── test-repos/        # Manual testing scripts
└── scripts/           # Build and release scripts

Benchmarking

The project includes optional benchmarking and profiling binaries (gated behind the bench-tools feature):

• Run benchmark (real-world throughput on a codebase)
• Run profile (repeatable timing runs + basic analysis)

Testing

# Run all tests
cargo test

# Run tests with output
cargo test -- --nocapture

# Run integration tests (including network-dependent)
cargo test -- --ignored

License

MIT