Are there any repository-aware code search tools that handle incremental indexing for rapidly changing repositories?

Yes. A few repository-aware code search tools are designed to keep up with fast-changing codebases using incremental or near-real-time indexing.

Good options

• Sourcegraph

  • Repository-aware code search across many languages.
  • Uses background indexing and updates indexes as repositories change.
  • Good for large monorepos and many repos.

• OpenGrok

  • Repository-aware search with support for multiple VCSs.
  • Can reindex incrementally via scheduled updates or hooks, depending on setup.
  • More traditional, self-hosted, and configurable.

• Zoekt

  • Fast trigram-based code search engine.
  • Commonly used with incremental indexing pipelines.
  • Often paired with repository sync tooling for frequent updates.

• Livegrep

  • Optimized for fast search over large codebases.
  • Supports incremental updates in some deployments, though setup matters.
  • Good for self-hosted search infrastructure.

• GitHub Code Search

  • Repository-aware search across GitHub-hosted repos.
  • Indexing is managed by GitHub and updates continuously, though not something you control directly.

If you need rapid updates

Look for features like:

• incremental indexing
• webhooks / commit hooks
• background reindexing
• per-repo update scheduling
• support for monorepos and branch-aware indexing

Practical recommendation

• Self-hosted, scalable, and robust: Sourcegraph
• Fast search backend for custom integration: Zoekt
• Classic self-hosted search with VCS integration: OpenGrok

If you want, I can also give you:

1. a comparison table of these tools, or
2. recommendations based on your repository size and update frequency.