package statocaml_changelog

Statocaml

Statocaml is a tool to gather development data from a github repository and generate statistics.

It was developed initially to study the development of OCaml but can be used on any github repository.

A presentation (in French) is available here.

Development is hosted here.

Installation

opam install statocaml_go statocaml_fetch

or

opam pin add https://gitlab.inria.fr/guesdon/statocaml.git

Statocaml uses some external tools which must be installed too:

• Graphviz (the dot tool),
• Gnuplot,
• Python 3 with package Louvain and its dependencies.

Usage

You will need a valid Github token to fetch information from the github site.

Configuration file

Create a configuration file conf.json (in JSON format) looking like this one (here the ocaml/conf.jsonfile for the ocaml/ocaml Github repository):

{
  "data_dir": "data", // where to store data
  "github": {
    "token": "...", // put your token here
    "cache_dir": "cache", // directory used for caching
    "user": "ocaml", // github user the repository belongs to
    "repo": "ocaml", // the repository to fetch
    "fetch_gh_users": [
      "bnigito", "bstarynk", "cagdasbozman", "claudemarche", "enaudon",
      "Lucccyo", "clappski", "djs55", "dweil", "flindgren", "gnecula",
      "Hirrolot", "jaked", "jeffsco", "jessicah", "jserot", "JuliaLawall",
      "kerneis", "khooyp", "klartext", "kyleheadley", "lebotlan", "letouzey",
      "MadCoder", "maverickwoo", "mkoconnor", "monate", "mrvn",
      "Nick-Chapman", "nickgian", "pdenys", "pocarist", "revskill10",
      "rdicosmo", "roshanjames", "sacerdot", "signoles", "smimram", "strub",
      "tertium", "TheAspiringHacker", "vog", "zoep"
    ] // additional users to fetch
  }
}

The fetch_gh_users field is required when a changelog is provided and it refers to contributions before the code was imported to Github: some contributors are not associated to their github accounts; this field is used to force fetching these accounts, and these accounts can be referenced in the file indicated by the --gh-users command line option of statocaml_go tool.

The file will be overriden by the statocaml_fetch tool to perform incremental fetch, i.e. not download all data every time we want to update the data locally.

The Github token can be indicated in three ways in the token field:

• as a string value of the field:

      {
  ...
  "token": "ghp_Km...",
  ...
  }

• in an environment variable whose name is given as a string value of the field, beginning with $:

      {
  ...
  "token": "$GITHUB_TOKEN",
  ...
  }

• on the first line of a file name is given as a string value of the field, beginning with . (relative filename) or / (absolute filename)':

      {
  ...
  "token": "./github.token",
  ...
  }

Fetching data

In the directory where your conf.json is, run:

$ statocaml_fetch

Use the -c option to indicate a different configuration file. This operation can take many hours (or days), depending on the size of the repository (number of commits, issues, pull requests, ...).

To update the local fetched data, run the same command. This will fetch new data since the last fetch, according to a field last_event_date automatically added into the configuration file.

Generating the statistics

Run

$ statocaml_go

By default, the configuration file used is conf.json but another one can be specified with the -c option. Beware that relative directories in configuration file are applied from current directory, not the directory where is the configuration file.

statocaml_go can use a changelog formatted in JSON format (with option --changelog) to get releases and contributors of each Issue/PR. For OCaml, Octachron's ocaml-changelog-analyzer is used to convert the OCaml Changes file to a JSON file.

Main command line options are:

• --html-outdir to indicate the directory where to generate the web site; default is statocaml-output.

• --events to indicate a file with additional events to display in some visualizations. The file is in JSON format, of the form

      [
   { "label": "my event 1", "date": (2025, 12, 31)},
   { "label": "my event 2", "date": (2025, 07, 14)},
   ...
  ]

• --gh-users to indicate a JSON file with information about contributors. This file is used to merge contributors found with different names of emails. It has the following form:

      [
   { "names": ["Alan Turing", "Turing Alan"], "gh_login": "alanturing",
     "emails": ["alan.turing@foo.bar", "alan@turing.uk"]
   },
   ...
  ]

• --groups to indicate a JSON file containing the definition of groups. This produces additional statistics for these groups, by merging statistics of their members. A group may have a github account indicated. The file has the following form:

      {
   "Group 1": {
     "members": {
      "githublogin1": [{"start":"2023-01-01T00:00:00-00:00"}],
      "githublogin2": [{"start":"2013-11-01T00:00:00-00:00","stop":"2017-11-01T00:00:00-00:00"}],
      "githublogin3":[],
      ... },
     "gh_account": "githubloginofgroup"
   },
   ...
  }

• --gui to launch a Graphical User Interface to create some plots according to entered parameters; these parameters can be copied in a JSON file. When this file is given with option --plots, these additional plots are integrated to the generated website.
• --subsystems to indicate a file containing subsystem definitions. Subsystems are defined by a name and an id; regular expressions are used to associate filenames in the git repository to subsystems. See ocaml/subsystems.json for an example of definitions used for OCaml.