kassane/dustmite

DustMite is a tool that shrinks large files down to their smallest possible version while keeping a specific behavior intact. Its main use is in programming: when someone discovers a bug in a compiler, they often need to provide a "minimal reproducible example" to report it. Instead of manually picking through thousands of lines of code to find the exact cause, a developer can point this tool at their program and let it automatically trim away everything that doesn't matter. The way it works is essentially smart trial and error. You give it your large file or project and tell it what behavior to look for, for example, a specific error message or a crash. The tool then starts deleting chunks of data, testing after each removal to see if the target behavior still happens. If the bug disappears, it puts that chunk back and tries removing something else. By repeating this process over and over, it gradually whittles the file down to a tiny core that still triggers the exact same problem. The primary audience is programmers who work with the D programming language, since that is what it was built for and where it is most commonly used. However, the README describes it as "general-purpose," meaning the same approach could theoretically apply to other types of data. The concrete use case is straightforward: a developer hits a compiler bug in a massive codebase, runs it through this tool, and gets back a 10-line snippet they can paste into a bug report. That saves hours of tedious manual investigation and makes life much easier for whoever has to fix the bug. The project was created by Vladimir Panteleev and is written in D itself. Beyond what is described above, the README is sparse on technical detail and points readers to a separate wiki on GitHub for full documentation.