[Geany-devel] SVN Log Stats

[Lex Trotman]

On 4 May 2011 10:39, Matthew Brush <mbrush at codebrainz.ca> wrote:
> On 05/03/11 17:11, Lex Trotman wrote:
>>
>> 2011/5/4 Enrico Tröger<enrico.troeger at uvena.de>:
>>>
>>> So, if anyone knows some cool SVN stats generator or Matthew wants to
>>> pimp his Python script to produce some fancy HTML, I'd happy to replace
>>> it :).
>>
>> I don't think these statistics are worth a pinch of ....
>
> Agreed, well except they show how many commits/LOC each committer has, which
> is why I whipped up a little Python script for this to begin with.

Let me be clear that there is no criticism of you doing it, I hope you
didn't interpret it that way, my concern is the use of such
statistics, especially if published regularly.

>
>>
>> What is the purpose?  If it is to identify contributors to the project
>> then its totally distorted and shouldn't be used.
>
> Agreed.  I just wanted to see how many commits were done by each committer
> within specific time periods, nothing more.

Ok

>
>>
>> Contributors like Matthew, Jiri and many more don't get a mention.
>> And all the translators who funnel through Frank are not mentioned in
>> this list. At the very least it needs to grep the thanks from the
>> changelog/commits.
>
> Better yet, use a proper VCS that allows proper attribution :)
[...]
> And use a better VCS where you don't need to have commit access to be the
> --author of a patch/commit :)
>

My concern is not about the mechanism or even really the accuracy of
the statistics, more how they can be used.  I recently saw a project
(which I better not identify) almost destroy itself and lose many
developers and contributors because such statistics were used to
justify ignoring and overriding contributions when there was a
disagreement.  It even got to the point of commits being reverted in
favour of the "more prevalent committer".

I'm not saying that Geany is in the same situation, far from it. Since
there have been some rumblings around the areas of VCS and process
speed, I think its best not to play with gas near the fire :-)


> Aside from that issue, at least the committers are very consistent in
> putting a thanks in the commit message and names/email in the THANKS file.
>  One improvement would be to do something like Scintilla does[1] on their
> website, though it would be tedious to maintain unless it was automated.

Yes thats a good idea.  And the history is easier to maintain than
just those who contributed to the latest release.

And I think that the original and major developers need to be
acknowledged as well, without them we wouldn't have anything to argue
over.

>
> I honestly have no idea what the purpose of the "Regular Contributors"
> section in the AUTHORS file is meant to serve.  If it's meant to be
> committers who commit less often than "Developers", it's missing some from
> what's in the SVN log.  If it's meant to be people who, regardless of commit
> access, contribute regularly, it's still missing people.

Lots of them.

Cheers
Lex