git-churn

git churn

Show log of files that have many changes

Git alias:

churn = !"f() { \
    git log \
    --all \
    --find-copies \
    --find-renames \
    --name-only \
    --format='format:' \
    \"$@\" | \
    awk 'NF{a[$0]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i], i}}' | \
    sort -rn; \
};f"

Show churn for whole repo:

git churn

Show churn for specific directories:

git churn app lib

Show churn for a time range:

git churn --since=1-month-ago

These are all standard arguments to git log.

It's possible to get valuable insight from history of a project not only by viewing individual commits, but by analyzing sets of changes as a whole.

For instance, git churn compiles stats about which files change the most.

For example, to see where work on an app was focused on in the past month:

git churn --since=1-month-ago app/ | tail

This can also highlight potential problems with technical debt in a project. A specific file changing too often is generally a red flag, since it probably means the file either needed to be frequently fixed for bugs, or the file holds too much responsibility and should be split into smaller units.

Similar methods of history analysis can be employed to see which people were responsible recently for development of a certain part of the codebase.

For instance, to see who contributed most to the API part of an application:

git log --format='%an' --since=1-month-ago app/controllers/api/ | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head
109 Alice Anderson
13 Bob Brown
7 Carol Clark

Credit:

• Written by Corey Haines

• Scriptified by Gary Bernhardt

• Obtained from https://github.com/garybernhardt/dotfiles/blob/main/bin/git-churn

• Comments by Mislav https://mislav.net/2014/02/hidden-documentation/

• Edited for GitAlias.com repo by Joel Parker Henderson