Krugle plans to ship next week an upgrade to its search appliance for enterprise software development projects, which makes it easier for teams of developers to maintain code.

Version 2.3 of Krugle Enterprise optimizes defect management across related projects and coordinates component development, Krugle said.

Offered as a piece of Intel-based hardware, Krugle Enterprise is installed inside a firewall and pointed at all source code management systems. A library of all source code is created, which is then made searchable from the developer's desktop.

"Developers who are involved in creating software might use this to understand and learn about code that's already been written," said Mel Badgett, Krugle vice president of marketing. Software development organizations can uncover intellectual property contained in source code as well as related information.

Version 2.3 can handle more than 10 billion lines of source code per appliance and has caching and processing methods for duplicate code modules.

Among other improvements is the ability to search for multiple lines of code. "Snippet" search results lists exact and approximate matches, enabling detection of similar code across multiple code branches or releases. Developers could find multiple instances of problem code and perform search-and-replace operations on it.

Also featured is a capability for associating custom data fields with each code file indexed. Users can extend code file search queries with custom qualifiers, such as file identifiers and links to other resources.

The base price of Krugle Enterprise 2.3 is $12,500 per year; pricing depends on how much code is being managed.