Using GitStats to Analyze Git Repository Contributions and Activity

If you work in a R&D efficiency team or deal with CI/CD and DevOps, metrics and data analysis are essential; GitStats is a lightweight Python‑based tool that generates beautiful HTML reports for Git repositories.

Installation : Ensure Git, Python 2, and Gnuplot are installed (preferably on Linux). Example commands:

# Download Python 2
sudo yum -y install python27
# Install Gnuplot
sudo yum -y install gnuplot
# Clone gitstats
git clone https://github.com/hoxu/gitstats.git
# Clone the repository you want to analyze (e.g., fastjson)
git clone https://github.com/alibaba/fastjson.git
# Generate the report
cd gitstats
./gitstats ../fastjson ../html/fastjson

The tool runs for about 15 seconds and produces various PNG graphs and an index.html file that can be opened in a browser.

Report analysis :

General statistics : first commit date, total active days, number of files (≈2960) and lines of code (≈250 000).

Activity patterns : commits per hour, day of week, week of year, and month of year; highlights peak activity periods and low‑activity windows (e.g., 12 pm–8 pm).

Contributors : list of authors with commit counts, first and latest commit dates, and email domains; identifies project creators and yearly top contributors.

File and line metrics : total file count, language distribution (Java ≈96 %, JSON next), and yearly file‑addition trends.

Tags : shows contribution rankings per tag/version, useful for release‑level analysis.

Finally, the article encourages readers to apply the same analysis to other interesting open‑source projects such as 996.ICU or Vue.