Development metrics to know about Free Software projects

Transcript

1. Development metrics to know about Free Software
   projects
   Alvaro del Castillo San F´
   elix
   acs@bitergia.com
   http://acsblog.es http://twitter.com/acstw
   Bitergia
   Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain), October 17th 2012
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 1 / 27
   

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2. c 2012 Bitergia
   Some rights reserved. This presentation is distributed under the
   “Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0” license, by Creative Commons, available at
   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
   Blog post about this presentation (including link to slides)
   http://blog.bitergia.com/2012/10/17/tomorrow-at-the-lswc12/
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 2 / 27
   

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3. Free software is (in many cases) special
   Source code available
   Open development model (usually)
   Many details about the internals of the development
   process
   Intense use of tools for coordination
   Lots of information is tracked, and available
   Developers & users communities are important
   sustainability
   pooling of resources
   innovation
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 3 / 27
   

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4. Measuring, measuring, measuring
   Information about code,
   community, development
   can be retrieved, organized,
   analyzed
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 4 / 27
   

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5. Who benefits
   Quantitative, objective data: facts, not opinions
   Specific questions can be answered
   Even simple analysis may help stakeholders:
   Developers:
   Understanding, improving development processes
   Users, integrators:
   Long-term sustainability, evolution, reaction to issues
   Investors:
   Attraction of external resources, growth rate
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 5 / 27
   

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6. But data has to be extracted, mined
   Data lives in repositories not always designed to release all
   their data easily:
   tools are needed to retrieve and extract it
   Data includes many complexities and details
   tools are needed to assist in its mining, analysis
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 6 / 27
   

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7. The Metrics Grimoire approach
   Set of tools specialized in retrieving information from
   different kinds of repositories. Among them:
   CVSAnalY: source code management (CVS,
   Subversion, git, etc.)
   Bicho: issue tracking systems (Bugzilla, Jira,
   SourceForge, Allura, Launchpad, Google Code, etc.)
   MLStats: mailing lists (mbox files, Mailman archives,
   etc.)
   Store all the information in SQL databases with similar
   structure
   http://metricsgrimoire.github.com
   https://github.com/MetricsGrimoire
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 7 / 27
   

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8. MetricsGrimoire: CVSAnalY
   Browses an SCM repository producing a database
   with:
   All metainformation (commit records, etc.)
   Metrics for each release of each file
   Also produces some tables suitable for specific analysis
   Multiple SCMs: CVS, svn, git (Bazaar partially)
   Whole history in the database, it’s possible to rebuild
   the files tree for any revision
   Tags and branches support
   Option to save the log to a file while parsing
   Extensions system, incremental capabilities
   Multiple database system support (MySQL and
   SQLite)
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 8 / 27
   

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9. MetricsGrimoire: CVSAnalY extensions
   Extension: a “plugin” for CVSAnalY
   Add information to the database, based in the
   information in the database and maybe the repository
   Usually: new tables for specific studies
   Simple example: commits per month per commiter
   Extensions add one or more tables to the database but
   they never modify the existing ones
   Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 9 / 27
   

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10. MetricsGrimoire: CVSAnalY extensions
    Some examples:
    FileTypes: adds a table containing information about
    the type of every file in the database (code,
    documentation, i18n, etc.)
    Metrics: analyzes every revision of every file
    calculating metrics like sloc and complexity metrics
    (mccabe, halstead). It currently supports metrics for
    C/C++, Python, Java and ADA.
    CommitsLOC: adds a new table with information
    about the total lines added/removed for every commit
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 10 / 27
    

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11. MetricsGrimoire: Bicho
    Parsing issue tracking systems
    Results stored in a MySQL database
    Information about each issue (ticket), and its
    modifications
    Currently it supports:
    SourceForge (HTML parsing)
    BugZilla: GNOME, KDE, others
    Jira, Google Code, Allura, Launchpad (API)
    Incremental
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 11 / 27
    

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12. MetricsGrimoire: MailingListStats
    Parses mbox information (RFC 822)
    Deals with Mailman archives
    Stores results (headers, body) in a MySQL database:
    Sender, CCs, etc.
    Time / Date
    Subject
    ...
    Incremental
    Can store multiple projects in a single database
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 12 / 27
    

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13. Milking the databases
    Once information is retrieved, and in suitable format for
    querying:
    it can be queried directly in the database
    it can be analyzed from R
    it can be filtered, manually inspected, improved
    it can be combined, cross-analyzed
    it can be visualized
    We’re building tools to simplify all of this: vizGrimoire
    https://github.com/VizGrimoire
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 13 / 27
    

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14. Now, some examples
    Some examples from real projects
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15. OpenStack: Opening / closing tickets
    Folsom release cycle, 2012
    http://blog.bitergia.com/2012/09/27/
    how-the-new-release-of-openstack-was-built/
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 15 / 27
    

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16. OpenStack: Who is developing it?
    Core projects / all projects (Folsom release cycle, 2012)
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17. Zentyal (basic analysis)
    Source code management repositories:
    git: git://git.zentyal.org/zentyal
    From: 2005-06-27
    To: 2012-09-10
    Mailing lists:
    Development
    Users
    Announcements
    http://lists.zentyal.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/
    From: 2010-09-01
    To: 2012-09-30
    http://blog.bitergia.com/2012/10/03/basic-analysis-of-zentyal/
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 17 / 27
    

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18. Zentyal: Git repository (parameters per month)
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19. Zentyal: Mailing lists (Developers, Users)
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 19 / 27
    

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20. LibrePlan (basic analysis)
    Source code management repositories:
    git: git://git.zentyal.org/zentyal
    From: 2009-04-23
    To: 2012-12-31
    Issue Tracking System:
    bugzilla: http://bugs.libreplan.org/
    From: 2009-10-04
    To: 2012-10-01
    http://blog.bitergia.com/2012/10/03/basic-analysis-of-zentyal/
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21. LibrePlan: Git repository (parameters per month)
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22. LibrePlan: Bugzilla repository (parameters per month)
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23. All of this can be integrated...
    Dashboards
    Forges
    IDEs
    Support systems
    ...
    A new generation of tracking
    systems for software development?
    Integrated with software forges?
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 23 / 27
    

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24. Example: towards a dashboard
    http://blog.bitergia.com/2012/09/27/
    how-the-new-release-of-openstack-was-built/
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 24 / 27
    

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25. In summary
    FLOSS development repositories have a wealth of
    information
    Their analysis is potentially interesting to any
    stakeholder
    Getting the data out of the repository is not that
    difficult...
    ...but analysis may be
    We’re interested in deep analysis
    We’re interested in working with developers,
    managers, users
    What would you like to know about your pet project?
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 25 / 27
    

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26. Bitergia: an spin-off
    Started operations in July 2012
    Builds on the experience of LibreSoft R&D group
    Offering professional products and services
    Focused on:
    Metrics about software development
    (including community metrics)
    Specialized support for development forges
    (including metrics for projects)
    http://bitergia.com
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 26 / 27
    

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27. This is the end
    Have you learned something
    useful?
    [I would love to know what interested you the most]
    [...and the least]
    acs@bitergia.com
    Alvaro del Castillo (Bitergia) Development metrics to know about Free Software projects LSWC 2012 27 / 27
    

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