remove-comments

Remove all comments from source code — as a Neovim plugin and as a standalone CLI tool.

Both tools use Tree-sitter for accurate, AST-based comment detection across many languages.

---

Overview

Tool	Use case
Neovim plugin	Remove comments from the current buffer
CLI (rmc / remove-comments)	Remove comments from an entire directory tree

---

Neovim Plugin

Requirements

• Neovim >= 0.9
• nvim-treesitter with parsers installed for your languages

Installation

lazy.nvim

{
  "KashifKhn/remove-comments",
  config = function()
    require("nvim-remove-comments").setup()
  end,
}

Usage

Default keybinding: <leader>rc

Or call directly:

:lua require("nvim-remove-comments").remove_comments()

Supported Languages (Plugin)

JavaScript, TypeScript, TSX, Lua, Python, Go, Java, C, C++, Rust, HTML, CSS, YAML, TOML, Bash, Dart

---

CLI: remove-comments / rmc

A standalone binary that walks a directory tree and removes all comments from every supported source file.

The installer creates both remove-comments and rmc — use whichever you prefer, they are the same binary.

Default behavior is dry-run. No files are modified unless --write is passed.

Installation

One-line installer (Linux / macOS)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KashifKhn/remove-comments/main/install.sh | sh

Install a specific version:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KashifKhn/remove-comments/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --version 1.0.0

Skip modifying shell config:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KashifKhn/remove-comments/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --no-modify-path

Manual download

Download a binary for your platform from the releases page, extract, and place it on your PATH.

Platform	Archive
Linux amd64	remove-comments-linux-amd64.tar.gz
macOS amd64	remove-comments-darwin-amd64.tar.gz
macOS arm64	remove-comments-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
Windows amd64	remove-comments-windows-amd64.zip

Build from source

Requires Go >= 1.24.

git clone https://github.com/KashifKhn/remove-comments.git
cd remove-comments/cli
go build -o remove-comments .
ln -sf $(pwd)/remove-comments $(dirname $(pwd))/rmc

Usage

Both rmc and remove-comments are identical — use either:

# Dry-run: show what would change (no files modified)
rmc .

# Apply changes
rmc --write .

# Target a specific directory
rmc --write ./src

# Process only Go files
rmc --lang go .

# Exclude generated files
rmc --exclude "*.g.dart" .

# Exclude multiple patterns (repeat the flag)
rmc --exclude "*.g.dart" --exclude "*_test.go" .

# Suppress per-file output, show only the summary
rmc --quiet .

# Show a unified diff per changed file
rmc --diff .

# Control parallelism
rmc --jobs 4 .

Flags

Flag	Short	Default	Description
--write	-w	false	Write changes to disk (default is dry-run)
--diff	-d	false	Print unified diff for each changed file
--quiet	-q	false	Print only the final summary line
--exclude	-e		Glob pattern to exclude files (repeatable, e.g. *.g.dart)
--lang		""	Process only files of this language (e.g. go, python)
--jobs	-j	NumCPU	Number of parallel workers
--max-file-size		10485760	Skip files larger than this size in bytes (10 MB)
--version			Print version and exit
--help	-h		Print help and exit

Subcommands

rmc upgrade

Self-update the binary to the latest release from GitHub.

# Check and upgrade to latest version
rmc upgrade

# Only check for updates (don't install)
rmc upgrade --check

# Force reinstall even if already on latest
rmc upgrade --force

# Upgrade to a specific version
rmc upgrade --version v1.0.3

# JSON output for scripting
rmc upgrade --check --json

Flag	Short	Default	Description
--check	-c	false	Only check for updates, do not install
--force	-f	false	Reinstall even if already on the latest version
--version	-v	""	Target a specific version (e.g. v1.0.3)
--json		false	Print result as JSON

Supported Languages (CLI)

Language	Extensions
JavaScript	.js .mjs .cjs .jsx
TypeScript	.ts .tsx
Go	.go
Python	.py
Rust	.rs
Java	.java
C	.c .h
C++	.cpp .cc .cxx .hpp
Lua	.lua
HTML	.html .htm
CSS	.css
YAML	.yaml .yml
TOML	.toml
Bash	.sh .bash
Dart	.dart

Files with unsupported extensions are skipped. The walker also respects .gitignore rules.

---

Why?

LLM-generated code tends to be full of explanatory comments. This toolset strips them out quickly so you can read and maintain the code without noise.

---

Repository Structure

remove-comments/
├── lua/nvim-remove-comments/   # Neovim plugin (Lua)
├── plugin/                     # Neovim autoload entry point
├── install.sh                  # CLI one-line installer
└── cli/                        # Go CLI tool
    ├── main.go
    ├── cmd/
    └── internal/
        ├── languages/          # Language → Tree-sitter grammar + query map
        ├── walker/             # Directory walker with .gitignore support
        ├── parser/             # Tree-sitter comment range extraction
        ├── remover/            # Comment removal from source bytes
        ├── diff/               # Before/after diff computation
        ├── output/             # Terminal output and summary
        └── upgrade/            # Self-update logic (version check, download, install)