Patrick DeVivo
Posted on February 16, 2022
mergestat is an open-source tool that allows users to run SQL queries on the contents and history of git repositories.
We recently added a summarize command, which prints out a summary report of various aspects of a repo. For instance, mergestat summarize commits will output commit stats grouped by author.
You can pass --start and --end flags to generate these stats for various periods of time, and filter by a path pattern to only match commits that modify certain files.
For instance, if we wanted to see a total summary of commits and authors in the Redis codebase, we could run:
mergestat summarize commits --repo https://github.com/redis/redis
Commits 10,950
Non-Merge Commits 9,533
Files Δ 2,307
Unique Authors 711
First Commit 14 years ago (2009-03-22)
Latest Commit 2 days ago (2022-02-14)
Author Commits Commit % Files Δ Additions Deletions First Commit Latest Commit
antirez 5,999 54.79% 1,311 553,839 284,018 14 years ago (2009-03-22) 2 years ago (2020-06-25)
Salvatore Sanfilippo 1,038 9.48% 336 62,815 15,823 12 years ago (2011-04-11) 2 years ago (2020-06-25)
Pieter Noordhuis 510 4.66% 209 44,927 16,860 13 years ago (2010-03-03) 9 years ago (2013-07-10)
Oran Agra 416 3.80% 654 50,531 16,960 7 years ago (2015-03-31) 3 days ago (2022-02-13)
Yossi Gottlieb 189 1.73% 263 19,059 5,047 10 years ago (2012-12-24) 20 days ago (2022-01-27)
zhaozhao.zz 153 1.40% 49 1,607 670 5 years ago (2017-09-20) 10 months ago (2021-05-12)
Matt Stancliff 151 1.38% 126 10,492 3,057 9 years ago (2014-02-10) 8 years ago (2015-02-24)
artix 122 1.11% 13 11,982 3,735 5 years ago (2018-01-12) 3 years ago (2020-02-18)
Binbin 96 0.88% 183 4,707 1,556 10 months ago (2021-04-28) 3 days ago (2022-02-13)
Itamar Haber 81 0.74% 76 5,930 1,042 7 years ago (2016-01-20) a year ago (2021-03-24)
Wen Hui 77 0.70% 60 2,293 522 2 years ago (2020-07-15) 7 days ago (2022-02-09)
sundb 59 0.54% 103 4,442 2,109 a year ago (2020-10-28) 5 days ago (2022-02-12)
Guy Benoish 56 0.51% 229 28,525 24,365 6 years ago (2016-10-31) 2 years ago (2020-05-03)
guybe7 56 0.51% 445 32,647 6,003 2 years ago (2020-08-18) 8 days ago (2022-02-08)
WuYunlong 54 0.49% 38 504 133 5 years ago (2017-07-15) a year ago (2021-02-09)
yoav-steinberg 46 0.42% 85 4,309 2,359 2 years ago (2020-07-16) 5 days ago (2022-02-11)
Huang Zhw 45 0.41% 39 1,323 546 a year ago (2021-03-06) 3 months ago (2021-11-28)
Madelyn Olson 45 0.41% 83 4,131 1,499 2 years ago (2020-07-21) 16 days ago (2022-01-30)
Madelyn Olson 38 0.35% 32 2,205 1,391 4 years ago (2018-06-19) 2 years ago (2020-05-21)
Dvir Volk 34 0.31% 9 873 270 6 years ago (2016-03-31) 5 years ago (2018-02-14)
Viktor Söderqvist 34 0.31% 91 5,597 1,578 a year ago (2021-01-13) 8 days ago (2022-02-08)
Wang Yuan 32 0.29% 47 2,520 649 2 years ago (2020-08-08) a month ago (2022-01-18)
dejun.xdj 30 0.27% 9 140 92 4 years ago (2018-04-10) 4 years ago (2018-08-22)
Geoff Garside 29 0.26% 9 219 109 11 years ago (2011-06-17) 10 years ago (2012-10-17)
antirez 25 0.23% 30 433 106 12 years ago (2010-04-22) 11 years ago (2011-06-02)
...686 more authors
We see that the first commit was roughly 14 years ago and there have been over 700 authors in the lifetime of the project (noting that sometimes we double count if different email addresses are used by the same author).
We also see that antirez, Salvatore Sanfilippo, is the most prolific committer by absolute number of commits (and likely additions/deletions as well). This makes sense, as he started the project back in 2009. However, we also note that his last commit was roughly 2 years ago. Again, this makes sense given his announcement to leave Redis, also around 2 years ago.
By passing in a --start flag, we can limit the report to only look at commits in the past year:
mergestat summarize commits --repo https://github.com/redis/redis --start "-1 year"
Commits 906
Non-Merge Commits 903
Files Δ 1,428
Unique Authors 173
First Commit a year ago (2021-02-15)
Latest Commit 2 days ago (2022-02-14)
Author Commits Commit % Files Δ Additions Deletions First Commit Latest Commit
Oran Agra 119 13.13% 521 20,237 7,941 a year ago (2021-02-15) 3 days ago (2022-02-13)
Binbin 96 10.60% 183 4,707 1,556 10 months ago (2021-04-28) 3 days ago (2022-02-13)
Yossi Gottlieb 58 6.40% 121 3,383 1,864 a year ago (2021-02-15) 20 days ago (2022-01-27)
Huang Zhw 45 4.97% 39 1,323 546 a year ago (2021-03-06) 3 months ago (2021-11-28)
yoav-steinberg 44 4.86% 81 4,235 2,294 a year ago (2021-03-03) 5 days ago (2022-02-11)
Wen Hui 41 4.53% 43 1,409 328 a year ago (2021-02-22) 7 days ago (2022-02-09)
guybe7 41 4.53% 441 31,325 5,702 a year ago (2021-02-23) 8 days ago (2022-02-08)
sundb 40 4.42% 90 4,142 1,870 a year ago (2021-02-19) 5 days ago (2022-02-12)
Madelyn Olson 30 3.31% 61 3,165 1,039 a year ago (2021-02-24) 16 days ago (2022-01-30)
Viktor Söderqvist 24 2.65% 83 3,675 1,035 a year ago (2021-02-15) 8 days ago (2022-02-08)
Wang Yuan 20 2.21% 38 1,882 449 a year ago (2021-03-25) a month ago (2022-01-18)
Meir Shpilraien (Spielrein) 17 1.88% 46 3,088 698 3 months ago (2021-11-28) 14 days ago (2022-02-02)
chenyang8094 16 1.77% 44 4,113 863 9 months ago (2021-06-16) 5 days ago (2022-02-12)
Ozan Tezcan 12 1.32% 49 1,200 235 4 months ago (2021-11-11) 18 days ago (2022-01-29)
YaacovHazan 12 1.32% 44 1,114 285 a year ago (2021-03-01) 2 days ago (2022-02-14)
Meir Shpilraien (Spielrein) 9 0.99% 18 2,107 316 a year ago (2021-03-16) 5 months ago (2021-10-06)
zhaozhao.zz 9 0.99% 20 493 124 10 months ago (2021-05-17) a month ago (2022-01-17)
Itamar Haber 8 0.88% 78 712 262 6 months ago (2021-09-09) a month ago (2022-01-09)
ZhaolongLi 8 0.88% 6 18 38 9 months ago (2021-06-07) 7 months ago (2021-07-25)
Bonsai 7 0.77% 17 86 21 a year ago (2021-02-28) 10 months ago (2021-05-19)
Harkrishn Patro 7 0.77% 33 1,551 211 a year ago (2021-02-17) 17 days ago (2022-01-30)
DarrenJiang13 6 0.66% 11 40 42 10 months ago (2021-05-19) 5 months ago (2021-10-18)
Yoav Steinberg 6 0.66% 652 175,144 86,772 5 months ago (2021-10-10) 5 months ago (2021-10-11)
perryitay 6 0.66% 58 1,539 313 8 months ago (2021-07-11) a month ago (2022-01-20)
David CARLIER 5 0.55% 4 52 5 6 months ago (2021-09-11) a month ago (2022-01-19)
...148 more authors
And we see over 100 unique contributors, with other maintainers now the primary committers.
It's important to note that in general, commits are not fungible - and absolute counts of them don't tell us much beyond, well, counts of commits. It may be useful to compare relative counts within the context of a project (like we do here), but using commit counts to tell us about "involvement" or "importance" of a contributor can be problematic, for many reasons.
If this is interesting, you can read more about our mission or try getting started with our CLI.
We'll be adding more summary report functionality for:
- Blameable Lines
- GitHub PRs
- GitHub Issues
- Files Modified
- ..and more!
Posted on February 16, 2022
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