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git-forks-analysis

★ 79 Open GitHub ↗

Analyze forks network to find hidden gems

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# git-forks-analysis

Analyze forks network to find interesting forks, commits, file changes.

## Why build it?

* Frustration with navigation forks graph / network on GitHub
* Too many forks with nothing interesting and noisy commits
* Wanting to find changes made to a file, function or a set of lines across the network to avoid duplicating the work (fixing similar bugs or building similar features)

## How does it work?

* Gets all forks and all branches into a single repository
* Make available git data mining tools such as `gitinspector` and `git_stats`. Use the tools in this repository as they have been modified to work across all branches
* View other `Tips` below on how to search across the forks network using Git commands

## How to install it?

```bash

git clone https://github.com/hbt/git-forks-analysis
cd git-forks-analysis
docker-compose pull

```

## How to use it?

To generate HTML visualization of forks

```bash

cd bin

./analyze-forks username repository

# retrieve all direct forks for https://github.com/hbt/mouseless
./analyze-forks hbt mouseless

# retrieve all forks recursively (the whole network) https://github.com/frost-nzcr4/find_forks -- purposefully chose a small repo to avoid running this by mistake
./analyze-forks-deep frost-nzcr4 find_forks

```

Calling the `gitinspector` directly via CLI

```bash

./bin/gitinspector /out/mouseless
./bin/gitinspector --grading=true /out/mouseless
./bin/gitinspector --grading=true  --format=html /out/mouseless

```

## What does it look like?

* gitinspector of mouseless [mouseless HTML](http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/hbt/git-forks-analysis/blob/master/example/mouseless/mouseless.html)
* gitinspector CLI output [mouseless CLI](/example/mouseless/mouseless.txt)
* quick_stats of mouseless [mouseless quick stats](http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/hbt/git-forks-analysis/blob/master/example/mouseless/git_stats/general.html)

## How to find interesting forks?

* Forks with stars / watchers -- use https://techgaun.github.io/active-forks/index.html
* Looks for commits count, insertions and deletion counts

## How to search for commits per file across all forks and branches?

```bash

cd out/mouseless
git log --all background_scripts/extension-reloader.js

# include diffs
git log -p --all background_scripts/extension-reloader.js

```

## How to search for changes in a function across all forks and branches?

```bash

# look for contributions to a specific function across all forks
git log --all -p -L ":getCenters":lib/model/PersonInfo.php --ignore-all-space --ignore-space-change --ignore-space-at-eol --ignore-blank-lines

# also accepts line numbers range
git log --all -p -L 13,20:lib/model/PersonInfo.php --ignore-all-space --ignore-space-change --ignore-space-at-eol --ignore-blank-lines

#modify ~/.gitattributes to add language support
#*.php diff=php
#*.js diff=node

#normalize the repo in case of ^M
#Note: this might corrupt some file formats (e.g binary, images etc.)
#https://superuser.com/questions/293941/rewrite-git-history-to-replace-all-crlf-to-lf

#**Note: perform all operations on tmpfs. Much faster**
#normalize the whole repo and its history
# specific file  (much faster) -- few minutes
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'git ls-files lib/model/PersonInfo.php -z | xargs -0 fromdos' -- --all

#whole repo but takes longer
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'git ls-files -z | xargs -0 fromdos' -- --all

#Alternative if language is not properly supported is to use pickaxe
git log --all -p -S"function createHints"  content_scripts/hints.js

# for some languages, --function-context works well
git log --all -p -ScreateHints --function-context content_scripts/hints.js

```

## How to search commits that have not been merged?

```bash

git log -p --all --not master --no-merges

```

## How to find most modified files in forks?

```bash

git log --all --pretty=format: --name-only --not master --no-merges | sort | uniq -c | sort -rg | head -10

```

## Other git data mining tools worth a mention

* [https://github.com/askgitdev/askgit](https://github.com/askgitdev/askgit) -- Query git repositories with SQL.
* [https://github.com/src-d/gitbase](https://github.com/src-d/gitbase) -- Turns Git Repository into an SQL database
* [https://github.com/src-d/hercules](https://github.com/src-d/hercules)
* [https://github.com/arzzen/git-quick-stats](https://github.com/arzzen/git-quick-stats) -- interactive tool
* [https://github.com/src-d/vecino](https://github.com/src-d/vecino) -- Recommends similar repositories 
* [https://github.com/src-d/msc](https://github.com/src-d/tmsc) -- Recommends topics per repo based on content
* [https://github.com/jgehring/pepper](https://github.com/jgehring/pepper) -- not tried
* [https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph](https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph) -- not tried but lots of stars
* [https://github.com/tj/git-extras](https://github.com/tj/git-extras) -- git-effort amongst others
* [https://github.com/ejwa/gitinspector](https://github.com/ejwa/gitinspector) -- used in this repo to create CLI git stats
* [https://github.com/tomgi/git_stats](https://github.com/tomgi/git_stats) --used in this repo to create HTML git stats
* [https://pydriller.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html](https://pydriller.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html) -- python api to parse git commits
* [https://github.com/arzzen/git-quick-stats/](https://github.com/arzzen/git-quick-stats/) -- CLI tool to browse contributors stats

## Contribute: Get in touch if you have a git data mining tool recommendation

git-forks-analysis

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