Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to A simple, highly commented, rootkit which attacks GCC and Python

This is an educational rootkit designed to demonstrate how compiler and interpreter toolchains can be compromised. It specifically targets GCC and Python, showing attack vectors through heavily commented code intended… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. A simple, highly commented, rootkit which attacks GCC and Python launched in 2014; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1
Prometeo – a Python-to-C transpiler for high-performance computing▲166
An experimental Python-to-C transpiler and domain specific language for embedded high-performance computing - zanellia/prometeo
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
2GO
Globstar – Open-source static analysis toolkit▲103
Hey HN! We’re Jai and Sanket, co-founders of DeepSource (YC W20). We're open-sourcing Globstar (https://github.com/DeepSourceCorp/globstar), a static analysis toolkit that lets you easily write and run custom code quality and security checkers in YAML [1] or Go [2]. After 5+ years of building AST-based static analyzers that process millions of lines of code daily at DeepSource, we kept hearing a common request from customers: "How do we write custom checks specific to our codebase?" AppSec and DevOps teams have a lot of learned anti-patterns and security rules they want…
2025 · its alternatives →
3
Python Source Code Refactoring Toolkit via AST▲110
AST-based fragmental source code refactoring toolkit for Python - isidentical/refactor
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
4
GitHits beta 0.9▲181
It has been almost 10 years since I started the opencv-python packaging project. Scaling it to more than 100 million downloads as a side project showed me how much ease of installation and proper package distribution matter to users. It gave the computer vision ecosystem a noticeable boost. Now I have a new idea that I hope can help even more people across the broader software engineering world. A while ago, I realized I kept giving the same advice to teammates and friends when they ran into a programming issue they couldn't easily solve: go to GitHub and look at how others solved it. There…
Jun 2026 · githits.com · its alternatives →
5
Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders▲136
Hi HN! I built pyscn for Python developers in the vibe coding era. If you're using Cursor, Claude, or ChatGPT to ship Python code fast, you know the feeling: features work, tests pass, but the codebase feels... messy. Common vibe coding artifacts: • Code duplication (from copy-pasted snippets) • Dead code from quick iterations • Over-engineered solutions for simple problems • Inconsistent patterns across modules pyscn performs structural analysis: • APTED tree edit distance + LSH • Control-Flow Graph (CFG) analysis • Coupling Between Objects (CBO) • Cyclomatic Complexity Try it without…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
6
I wrote a BASIC interpreter in Go▲144
A BASIC interpreter written in golang. Contribute to skx/gobasic development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
7
COBOL-REKT, a toolkit for analysing and reverse-engineering COBOL▲91
This is an evolving toolkit of capabilities helpful for analysing and reverse engineering legacy Cobol code. Currently, the following capabilities are available: - Program / Section-level flowchart generation based on AST (SVG or PNG) - Parse Tree generation (with export to JSON) - Control Flow Tree generation (with export to JSON) - Allows embedding code comments as comment nodes in the graph - The SMOJOL Interpreter (WIP) - Injecting AST and Control Flow into Neo4J - Injecting Cobol data layouts from Data Division into Neo4J (with dependencies like MOVE, COMPUTE, etc.) + export to…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
8
Adding some syntactic sugar to Python▲77
A library adding some anti-Pythonic syntatic sugar to Python - czheo/syntax_sugar_python
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
9
Copy-and-patch compiler for hard real-time Python▲65
I built Copapy as an experiment: Can Python be used for hard real-time systems? Instead of an interpreter or JIT, Copapy builds a computation graph by tracing Python code and uses a custom copy-and-patch compiler. The result is very fast native code with no GC, no syscalls, and no memory allocations at runtime. The copy-and-patch compiler currently supports x86_64 as well as 32- and 64-bit ARM. It comes as small Python package with no other dependencies - no cross-compiler, nothing except Python. The current focus is on robotics and control systems in general. This project is early but…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
10
Gsubpy, an interpreter for subset of Python, written in Go▲65
Recently, I write an interpreter for subset of Python using Go. I haven't seen source code of CPython, all is just written according to my understanding of Python so there may be some unusual things. Hope you can play fun with it. Any suggestion is welcome, glad to get some feedback.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
11AC
A cross-platform toolkit to explore OS internals and capabilities▲7
I built this toolkit with my colleague to dive deep into OS internals and automate the identification of privilege escalation vectors. Written in pure C without external dependencies, it explores everything from Linux capabilities and Docker escapes to Windows token manipulation and service permissions. We believe that the constant struggle between breaking and securing systems is the ultimate driver of software evolution. This tool is our contribution to that cycle, designed for researchers who want to understand how low-level misconfigurations can be discovered and audited across different…
Jan 2026 · its alternatives →
12
Pytroj - Infect .pyc files▲53
A tool for infected .pyc files with arbitrary code that spreads out to infect all other .pyc files - jgeralnik/Pytroj
2011 · github.com · its alternatives →
13SA
StepKit, an open and cross-platform durable execution standard▲36
Hi HN! I’m Tony, one of the co-founders of Inngest (https://inngest.com/). Wanted to show you something we’re working on: StepKit. StepKit is an open source SDK and framework for building and iterating on durable workflows that run on any platform (self-hosted, Inngest, Cloudflare, Netlify, etc.) without requiring any provider or bundler-specific code. Here’s the repo: https://github.com/inngest/stepkit. StepKit extracts the core execution loop that we built in Inngest and makes it fully open, Apache 2, and hackable/pluggable to different backends. We…
Nov 2025 · its alternatives →
14AC
a compiler from Python syntax to JavaScript syntax (like CoffeeScript)▲32
2010 · pyxc.org · its alternatives →
15
Panoptisch – A recursive dependency scanner for Python projects▲45
Hello all, Very excited to share this project with you all! Panoptisch scans your Python file or module to find it's imports (aka dependencies) and recursively does so for all dependencies and sub-dependencies. It then generates a dependency tree in JSON for you to parse and enforce import policies. Supply chain attacks are no joke, and this is one way to transparently analyze your dependencies to see if any malicious imports are taking place. For example, your yaml parser, nor it's sub-dependencies should import socket, or sys. Panoptisch is in early stages, with known limitations (for…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
16
Tt – a Python library/cli for Boolean expressions▲23
a Pythonic toolkit for working with Boolean expressions - welchbj/tt
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
17
I built a tool for policy driven vetting of open source packages▲7
Linux Foundation survey says 70-90% of modern software constitute OSS code. Yet we are stuck with tools that scan only for vulnerabilities in 3rd party libraries and that too with high degree of false positives. I built `vet` for policy and data driven analysis of 3rd party packages that goes beyond only vulnerability and allows codifying organisational policies related to OSS consumption. https://github.com/safedep/vet Looking forward to feedback and suggestions from HN :)
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
18
PEP8Speaks – A GitHub Bot to Monitor Python Style on Pull Requests▲7
A GitHub :octocat: app to automatically review Python code style over Pull Requests - GitHub - pep8speaks-org/pep8speaks: A GitHub app to automatically review Python code style over Pull Requests
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
19
A CLI tool for quickly identifying failed tests in GitHub Actions▲5
A command-line tool for interacting with Github API with some specialized features oriented around Checks - raine/ghtool
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
20
CodeSwissKnife▲10
Focus on Productivity with Secure, Offline Developer Tools
2024 · ottorinobruni.gumroad.com · its alternatives →
21
CodeSwissKnife Bar▲7
I’d like to share CodeSwissKnife 1.1.0, a free all-in-one developer toolkit I built for macOS and Windows. It’s designed to help developers simplify everyday tasks like encoding, decoding, text formatting, and more—fully offline for privacy and speed. This toolkit was born out of the frustration of relying on scattered online utilities. With CodeSwissKnife, everything is in one place, ad-free, and secure. Key features: - Text converters (e.g., CamelCase, KebabCase) - Encoding & decoding (Base64, URLs, etc.) - JSON and XML formatting - UUID and hash generation - Regex testing and Markdown…
2025 · codeswissknife.com · its alternatives →
22PL
Python library to scan ML models for vulnerabilities▲20
Hi! I’ve been working on this automatic scanner for ML models to detect issues like underperforming data slices, overconfidence in predictions, robustness problems, and others. It supports all main Python ML frameworks (sklearn, torch, xgboost, …) and integrates with the quality assurance solution we are building at Giskard AI (https://giskard.ai) to systematically test models before putting them in production. It is still a beta and I would love to hear your feedback if you have the time to try it out. We have quite a few tutorials in the docs with ready-made colab notebooks to…
2023 · docs.giskard.ai · its alternatives →
23
I built a PR listener and ruleset to detect malicious code in CI/CD▲13
I built a GitHub app that detects it in pull requests, notifies or blocks them. Alongside it, I published a Semgrep ruleset for any stage of the CI/CD. I started this after getting frustrated by all the FUD around malicious code - lots of noise, little effort to solve it. Having said that, it's still a major attack vector - a stored RCE, with the codebase itself as the sink. Feedback is appreciated. The app, PRevent - https://github.com/apiiro/PRevent The ruleset: https://github.com/apiiro/malicious-code-ruleset The research:…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
24
Achilles – Automatic profiling and C++ optimization of Python via LLMs▲7
Hey HN! We built Achilles, a tool that automatically accelerates your Python code. It identifies performance bottlenecks, rewrites those functions in optimized C++, and seamlessly patches them into your running program—without you changing a single line of code. In CPU-intensive, loop-heavy tasks, we've observed performance improvements of 100-1000x. Achilles can be installed via pip and works with just a single command. We'd appreciate your feedback, and feel free to give us a star if you find it interesting!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

Also compare

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →