Analyzing KDE Project Health With git!

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I was reading the latest edition of Kevin Ottens’ excellent weekly web review and one particular article caught my eye: “The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code“. In a nutshell, you can use the git version control tool to quickly assess a project’s health, what breaks, who’s a key figure, how bad emergencies are, and so on.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://pointieststick.com/2026/04/10/analyzing-kde-project-health-with-git/
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@ngraham, this lacks a pre > code.

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The article itself has it; I’m not sure what you’re looking at.

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@ngraham, it should be your original markup:

I immediately wanted to apply this to KDE projects. So I took the commands from the post and made some shell aliases and functions for convenience:

# git repo analysis toolsalias what-changes="echo 'What changes a lot?' && git log --format=format: --name-only --since='1 year ago' | rg -v 'po$|json$|desktop$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"alias what-breaks="echo 'What breaks a lot?' && git log -i -E --grep='fix|bug|broke|bad|wrong|incorrect|problem' --name-only --format='' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"alias emergencies="echo 'And what were the emergencies?' && git log --oneline --since='1 year ago' | grep -iE 'revert|hotfix|emergency|urgent|rollback'"alias momentum="echo \"What's the project's momentum over the past 5 years?\" && git log --format='%ad' --date=format:'%Y-%m' | sort | uniq -c | tail -n 60"alias maintainers-recently="echo \"Who's been driving this project in the past year?\" && git shortlog -sn --no-merges --since='1 year ago' | rg -v 'l10n daemon script' | head -n 30"alias maintainers-alltime="echo 'And what about for all time?' && git shortlog -sn --no-merges | rg -v 'l10n daemon script' | head -n 30"function repo-analysis {    what-changes    echo    what-breaks    echo    emergencies    echo    momentum    echo    maintainers-recently    echo    maintainers-alltime}

Now let’s run it on Plasma. Here’s plasma-workspace, the core of Plasma:

$ git clone ssh://git@invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace.git
$ cd plasma-workspace
$ repo-analysis
What changes a lot?
1519
38 CMakeLists.txt
29 shell/shellcorona.cpp
24 runners/services/servicerunner.cpp
21 wallpapers/image/imagepackage/contents/ui/config.qml
19 libnotificationmanager/notifications.cpp
18 shell/org.kde.plasmashell.desktop.cmake
18 devicenotifications/devicenotifications.cpp
17 kcms/lookandfeel/kcm.cpp
16 wallpapers/image/plugin/model/packagelistmodel.cpp
16 kcms/cursortheme/xcursor/xcursor.knsrc
15 wallpapers/image/plugin/model/imagelistmodel.cpp
15 applets/notifications/global/Globals.qml
15 applets/devicenotifier/devicecontrol.cpp
14 wallpapers/image/plugin/imagebackend.cpp
14 shell/panelview.cpp
14 .kde-ci.yml
14 applets/systemtray/systemtray.cpp
13 runners/services/autotests/servicerunnertest.cpp
12 krunner/qml/RunCommand.qml

What breaks a lot?
225 shell/shellcorona.cpp
183 shell/panelview.cpp
83 CMakeLists.txt
74 applets/systemtray/package/contents/ui/main.qml
71 applets/digital-clock/package/contents/ui/DigitalClock.qml
63 klipper/klipper.cpp
62 applets/notifications/package/contents/ui/NotificationItem.qml
58 wallpapers/image/imagepackage/contents/ui/config.qml
56 shell/desktopview.cpp
56 libtaskmanager/tasksmodel.cpp
54 shell/main.cpp
54 applets/systemtray/systemtray.cpp
53 shell/shellcorona.h
52 krunner/view.cpp
48 applets/digital-clock/package/contents/ui/CalendarView.qml
47 runners/services/servicerunner.cpp
46 wallpapers/image/imagepackage/contents/ui/main.qml
45 applets/notifications/package/contents/ui/NotificationPopup.qml
44 applets/systemtray/package/contents/ui/ExpandedRepresentation.qml
43 startkde/startplasma.cpp

And what were the emergencies?
4f526a7bd1 Revert “applets/systemtray: Prevent popups from overlapping with the panel”
dca5788fee lookandfeel/components: Revert Plasma::setupPlasmaStyle
2c0fd34541 Revert “ContainmentLayoutManager: send recursive mouse release events too”
b6b230f4ff Revert “Read selenium-webdriver-at-spi-run location from CMake”
b8651b56f6 hotfix: Remove doc translations without actual doc
1f43f576e8 Revert “Add forceImageAnimation property to force animated image play”
f0349b6c81 hotfix: remove stray .po file
3ff7ae4269 Revert “CI: enable parallel testing”
83bebc7896 Revert “Limit evaluateScript execution at 2 seconds”
4f45f672be Revert “kcms/componentchooser: Don’t offer NoDisplay services”
3bf0ff8f56 Revert “Disable linux-qt6-next while the regression in Qt gets fixed”
80996f0633 Revert “kcms/wallpaper: set roleNames for WallpaperConfigModel”

What’s the project’s momentum over the past 5 years?
148 2021-05
87 2021-06
62 2021-07
85 2021-08
121 2021-09
106 2021-10
146 2021-11
190 2021-12
191 2022-01
84 2022-02
168 2022-03
130 2022-04
146 2022-05
141 2022-06
136 2022-07
107 2022-08
232 2022-09
234 2022-10
181 2022-11
150 2022-12
154 2023-01
161 2023-02
156 2023-03
156 2023-04
163 2023-05
137 2023-06
186 2023-07
190 2023-08
275 2023-09
226 2023-10
283 2023-11
157 2023-12
131 2024-01
147 2024-02
249 2024-03
180 2024-04
188 2024-05
158 2024-06
128 2024-07
146 2024-08
169 2024-09
156 2024-10
116 2024-11
98 2024-12
145 2025-01
126 2025-02
120 2025-03
116 2025-04
131 2025-05
131 2025-06
132 2025-07
115 2025-08
110 2025-09
97 2025-10
147 2025-11
114 2025-12
140 2026-01
131 2026-02
119 2026-03
44 2026-04

Who’s been driving this project in the past year?
116 Vlad Zahorodnii
113 Nicolas Fella
87 Christoph Wolk
82 Fushan Wen
78 Nate Graham
66 Kai Uwe Broulik
48 Bohdan Onofriichuk
37 Harald Sitter
34 Tobias Fella
31 Marco Martin
30 David Edmundson
25 Akseli Lahtinen
21 Ismael Asensio
17 David Redondo
16 Niccolò Venerandi
15 Bhushan Shah
11 Alexander Lohnau
11 Kristen McWilliam
9 Oliver Beard
9 Shubham Arora
8 Alexey Rochev
8 Han Young
8 Philipp Kiemle
7 Albert Astals Cid
6 Aleix Pol
6 Méven Car
5 Devin Lin
5 Joshua Goins
4 Alexander Wilms
4 Arjen Hiemstra

And what about for all time?
1543 Fushan Wen
1497 Marco Martin
1374 Kai Uwe Broulik
1030 David Edmundson
772 Nate Graham
658 Alexander Lohnau
551 Aleix Pol
548 Nicolas Fella
438 ivan tkachenko
385 Eike Hein
264 Sebastian Kügler
250 Martin Gräßlin
238 Harald Sitter
232 Martin Klapetek
223 Jonathan Riddell
207 Vlad Zahorodnii
194 David Redondo
190 Friedrich W. H. Kossebau
189 Laurent Montel
144 Bhushan Shah
134 Christoph Wolk
134 Ismael Asensio
126 Lukáš Tinkl
121 Niccolò Venerandi
117 Méven Car
105 Natalie Clarius
91 Konrad Materka
80 Vishesh Handa
80 Volker Krause
79 Ivan Čukić

ShellCorona both changing and breaking a lot is no great surprise to me; it’s fiddly and complicated.

Instead, it’s the aforequoted.

It’s removed all semantic tags, such that it’s practically removed all paragraph breaks, and applied mandatory word wrap to all lines.

In case it somehow doesn’t render for you, I see:

690×1352 89.6 KB

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But where and how are you seeing this?

On the actual web page for the actual post, everything looks fine to me if I view the content by, well, looking at it.

What are you doing to get the content into this form where the markup looks broken to you?

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@ngraham, Discourse’s “Show full post” option (.post__expand-button), as above:

A Screenshot

Do you not see it?

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I never even noticed that button!

I’d recommend not using it; it would appear that whatever HTML unwrapping and reformatting it’s doing doesn’t work for this.

Just go to the website and read the full post there. The formatting is correct there.

1 Like
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@ngraham, shall do! However, you may want to adhere to what the undermentioned recommends: