1. Introduction

In this blog post / notebook, we want to take a look at how much information you can extract from a simple Git log output. We want to know

  • where the developers come from
  • on which weekdays the developers don’t work
  • which developers are working on weekends
  • what the normal working hours are
  • if the is any sight of overtime periods.

We use Pandas as data analysis toolkit to accomplish these tasks for the big open source project IntelliJ.

2. Gaining the data

To get the necessary data, we clone the Git repository with

git clone https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community.git

and create a latin-1 encoded log file of the complete commit history with

git log --date=raw --encoding=LATIN-1 --pretty="%ad%x09%aN%x09%ae" > git_timestamp_author_email.log

on the command line.

This gives us a nice file with the following content:

1514469569 +0300    Kirill Kirichenko   kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com
1514469402 +0100    Anna Kozlova    anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com
1514469119 +0100    Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com
1514468066 +0100    Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com
1514462548 +0100    Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com
...

It includes the UNIX timestamp (in seconds since epoch), a whitespace, the time zone (where the authors live in), a tab separator, the name of the author, a tab and the email address of the author.

Note:

  • We use the --date=raw option that returns the UNIX timestamp in the UTC time zone and the author’s time zone. We use the UNIX timestamp because Pandas can parse that data format very efficient. We need also the time zone because we want to know when each committer works at their local time.
  • We’ve created and implicitly used a .mailmap file for this task to map multiple author names and email addresses to the same person. You can find this file in this GitHub Gist. To use it, the file has to be put into the root of the Git repository before the execution of the git log command.

3. Wrangling the raw data

We import the data by using Pandas’ read_csv function and the appropriate parameters.

In [1]:
import pandas as pd

raw = pd.read_csv(
    r'../../intellij-community/git_timestamp_author_email.log',
    sep="\t",
    encoding="latin-1",
    header=None,
    names=['unix_timestamp', 'author', 'email'])

raw.head()
Out[1]:
unix_timestamp author email
0 1514469569 +0300 Kirill Kirichenko kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com
1 1514469402 +0100 Anna Kozlova anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com
2 1514469119 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com
3 1514468066 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com
4 1514462548 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com

We need to split the information in unix_timestamp into the separate columns timestamp and timezone.

In [2]:
raw[['timestamp', 'timezone']] = raw['unix_timestamp'].str.split(" ", expand=True)
raw.head()
Out[2]:
unix_timestamp author email timestamp timezone
0 1514469569 +0300 Kirill Kirichenko kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com 1514469569 +0300
1 1514469402 +0100 Anna Kozlova anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com 1514469402 +0100
2 1514469119 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 1514469119 +0100
3 1514468066 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 1514468066 +0100
4 1514462548 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 1514462548 +0100

We also create a new numeric column for the timezone offset for later calculations.

In [3]:
raw['timezone_offset'] = pd.to_numeric(raw['timezone']) / 100.0
raw.head()
Out[3]:
unix_timestamp author email timestamp timezone timezone_offset
0 1514469569 +0300 Kirill Kirichenko kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com 1514469569 +0300 3.0
1 1514469402 +0100 Anna Kozlova anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com 1514469402 +0100 1.0
2 1514469119 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 1514469119 +0100 1.0
3 1514468066 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 1514468066 +0100 1.0
4 1514462548 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 1514462548 +0100 1.0

To get a real time column, we convert the information in timestamp accordingly.

In [4]:
raw['timestamp'] = pd.to_datetime(raw['timestamp'], unit="s")
raw.head()
Out[4]:
unix_timestamp author email timestamp timezone timezone_offset
0 1514469569 +0300 Kirill Kirichenko kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 13:59:29 +0300 3.0
1 1514469402 +0100 Anna Kozlova anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 13:56:42 +0100 1.0
2 1514469119 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 13:51:59 +0100 1.0
3 1514468066 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 13:34:26 +0100 1.0
4 1514462548 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 12:02:28 +0100 1.0

We also calculate the local time of each commit by adding the timezone_offset data to the timestamp entries.

In [5]:
raw["timestamp_local"] = raw['timestamp'] + pd.to_timedelta(raw['timezone_offset'], unit='h')
raw.head()
Out[5]:
unix_timestamp author email timestamp timezone timezone_offset timestamp_local
0 1514469569 +0300 Kirill Kirichenko kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 13:59:29 +0300 3.0 2017-12-28 16:59:29
1 1514469402 +0100 Anna Kozlova anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 13:56:42 +0100 1.0 2017-12-28 14:56:42
2 1514469119 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 13:51:59 +0100 1.0 2017-12-28 14:51:59
3 1514468066 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 13:34:26 +0100 1.0 2017-12-28 14:34:26
4 1514462548 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com 2017-12-28 12:02:28 +0100 1.0 2017-12-28 13:02:28

At last, we copy only the needed data from the raw dataset into the new DataFrame git_authors.

In [6]:
git_authors = raw[['timestamp_local', 'timezone', 'author', 'email']].copy()
git_authors.head()
Out[6]:
timestamp_local timezone author email
0 2017-12-28 16:59:29 +0300 Kirill Kirichenko kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com
1 2017-12-28 14:56:42 +0100 Anna Kozlova anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com
2 2017-12-28 14:51:59 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com
3 2017-12-28 14:34:26 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com
4 2017-12-28 13:02:28 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com

4. Refining the dataset

In this section, we add some additional information to the DataFrame to accomplish our tasks.

4.1 Adding weekdays

First, we add the information about the weekdays based on the dayofweek information of the timestamp_local column. We round down possible non-integer values and extract the weekday name from the calender.day_name list. Because we want to preserve the order of the weekdays, we convert the day entries to a Categorial data type, too.

In [7]:
import calendar

git_authors['day'] = git_authors["timestamp_local"].apply(lambda x : calendar.day_name[int(x.dayofweek)])
git_authors['day'] = pd.Categorical(git_authors['day'], categories=calendar.day_name, ordered=True)
git_authors.head()
Out[7]:
timestamp_local timezone author email day
0 2017-12-28 16:59:29 +0300 Kirill Kirichenko kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com Thursday
1 2017-12-28 14:56:42 +0100 Anna Kozlova anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com Thursday
2 2017-12-28 14:51:59 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com Thursday
3 2017-12-28 14:34:26 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com Thursday
4 2017-12-28 13:02:28 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com Thursday

4.2 Adding working hours

For the working hour analysis, we extract the hour information from the timestamp_local columns.

In [8]:
git_authors['hour'] = git_authors['timestamp_local'].dt.hour
git_authors.head()
Out[8]:
timestamp_local timezone author email day hour
0 2017-12-28 16:59:29 +0300 Kirill Kirichenko kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com Thursday 16
1 2017-12-28 14:56:42 +0100 Anna Kozlova anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com Thursday 14
2 2017-12-28 14:51:59 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com Thursday 14
3 2017-12-28 14:34:26 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com Thursday 14
4 2017-12-28 13:02:28 +0100 Vladimir Krivosheev vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com Thursday 13

5. Analyzing the data

With the prepared git_authors DataFrame, we are now able to deliver insights into the past years of development.

5.1 Developers’ timezones

First, we want to know where the developers roughly live. For this, we plot the values of the timezone columns as a pie chart.

In [9]:
%matplotlib inline
git_authors['timezone'].value_counts().plot(kind='pie', figsize=(7,7), title="Developer's timezones")
Out[9]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x242f86c5198>

Result

The majority of the developers’ lives in the time zones +0300 and +0400. Looking at a time zone map (source) and on the website of the company that mainly maintains the project, we can defer that most of the developers are probably working from Russia.

5.2 Weekdays with the most commits

Next, we want to know on which days the developers are working during the week. We count by the weekdays but avoid sorting the results to keep the order along our categories.

In [10]:
commits_per_weekday = git_authors['day'].value_counts(sort=False)
commits_per_weekday
Out[10]:
Monday       38605
Tuesday      40611
Wednesday    40988
Thursday     40487
Friday       37459
Saturday      6896
Sunday        5355
Name: day, dtype: int64

We plot the result as a standard bar chart.

In [11]:
ax = commits_per_weekday.plot(kind='bar', title="Commits per weekday")
ax.set_xlabel('weekday')
ax.set_ylabel('# commits')
Out[11]:
<matplotlib.text.Text at 0x242f8918390>

Result:

Most of the commits occur during normal working days. There are just a few commits on weekends.

5.3 Working behavior on weekends

We take a look at the type of weekend workers. We want to see, if the commits come from the main developing company JetBrains or from other voluntary contributors that work on the open source project on weekends.

As an approximation, we use the domain name that is included in the author’s email addresses to decide if an author is an employee of JetBrains or not. We use a separate DataFrame weekend_workers for this task.

In [12]:
weekend_workers = git_authors[['day', 'email']].copy()
weekend_workers['employee'] = weekend_workers['email'].str.lower().str.endswith("@jetbrains.com")
weekend_workers.head()
Out[12]:
day email employee
0 Thursday kirill.kirichenko@jetbrains.com True
1 Thursday anna.kozlova@jetbrains.com True
2 Thursday vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com True
3 Thursday vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com True
4 Thursday vladimir.krivosheev@jetbrains.com True

We group and count the weekdays and employee information and store the result in the new DataFrame commits_per_weekday_employee.

In [13]:
commits_per_weekday_employee = weekend_workers.groupby(['day', 'employee']).count().unstack()
commits_per_weekday_employee
Out[13]:
email
employee False True
day
Monday 6428 32177
Tuesday 6411 34200
Wednesday 6515 34473
Thursday 6658 33829
Friday 5720 31739
Saturday 1353 5543
Sunday 933 4422

To be able to spot differences more easily, we calculate the ratio between the employed developers and all developers.

In [14]:
commits_per_weekday_employee['employed_ratio'] = \
  commits_per_weekday_employee['email'][True] / \
    commits_per_weekday_employee['email'].sum(axis=1)
commits_per_weekday_employee
Out[14]:
email employed_ratio
employee False True
day
Monday 6428 32177 0.833493
Tuesday 6411 34200 0.842136
Wednesday 6515 34473 0.841051
Thursday 6658 33829 0.835552
Friday 5720 31739 0.847300
Saturday 1353 5543 0.803799
Sunday 933 4422 0.825770

We plot this new information in a second bar chart to see possible differences in the committing behavior between IntelliJ employees and other contributors.

In [15]:
ax = commits_per_weekday_employee['employed_ratio'].plot(
    kind='bar', color='g', title="Ratio of commits from employed authors")
ax.set_xlabel("weekdays")
ax.set_xlabel("ratio")
Out[15]:
<matplotlib.text.Text at 0x242f8918828>

Result

There is only a slight, non-significant difference between the ratio of employed and non-employed contributors on weekends.

5.4 Usual working hours

To find out about the working habits of the contributors, we group the commits by hour and count the entries (in this case we choose author) to see if there are any irregularities.

In [16]:
working_hours = git_authors.groupby(['hour'])['author'].count()
working_hours.head()
Out[16]:
hour
0    2083
1    1397
2     825
3     485
4     311
Name: author, dtype: int64

Again, we plot the results with a standard bar chart.

In [17]:
ax = working_hours.plot(kind='bar')
ax.set_title("Distribution of working hours")
ax.yaxis.set_label_text("# commits")
ax.xaxis.set_label_text("hour")
Out[17]:
<matplotlib.text.Text at 0x242f88cf320>

Result

The distribution of the working hours is a nice Gaussian distribution. It seems that this open source project is mainly developed by developers in their full-time jobs.

5.5 Signs of overtime

At last, we have a look at possible overtime periods. For this, we first group all commits on a weekly basis per authors. As grouping function, we choose max() to get the hour where each author committed at latest per week.

In [18]:
latest_hour_per_week  = git_authors.groupby(
    [
        pd.Grouper(key='timestamp_local', freq='1w'), 
        'author']
)[['hour']].max()

latest_hour_per_week.head()
Out[18]:
hour
timestamp_local author
2004-11-07 Olesya Smirnova 20
2004-11-14 Alexey Kudravtsev 16
Olesya Smirnova 22
2004-11-21 Anna Kozlova 21
Olesya Smirnova 19

Next, we want to know if there were any stressful time periods that forced the developers to work overtime over a longer period of time. We calculate the mean of all late stays of all authors for each week.

In [19]:
mean_latest_hours_per_week = latest_hour_per_week.reset_index().groupby('timestamp_local').mean()
mean_latest_hours_per_week.head()
Out[19]:
hour
timestamp_local
2004-11-07 20.000000
2004-11-14 19.000000
2004-11-21 13.666667
2004-12-05 16.666667
2004-12-12 15.333333

We also create a trend line that shows how the contributors are working over the span of the past years. We use the polyfit function from numpy for this which needs a numeric index to calculate the polynomial coefficients later on.

In [20]:
numeric_index = range(0, len(mean_latest_hours_per_week.index.week))
numeric_index
Out[20]:
range(0, 684)

We then calculate the coeffiecients with a three-dimensional polynomial based on the hours of the mean_latest_hours_per_week DataFrame.

In [21]:
import numpy as np
coefficients = np.polyfit(numeric_index, mean_latest_hours_per_week.hour, 3)
coefficients
Out[21]:
array([ -2.35626413e-08,   2.54703899e-05,  -9.85330587e-03,
         2.02637516e+01])

For visualization, we decrease the number of degrees and calculate the y-coordinates for all weeks that are encoded in numeric_index.

In [22]:
polynomial = np.poly1d(coefficients)
ys = polynomial(numeric_index)
ys[:5]
Out[22]:
array([ 20.2637516 ,  20.25392374,  20.24414669,  20.23442028,  20.2247444 ])

At last, we plot the results of the mean_latest_hours_per_week DataFrame as well as the trend line in one line plot.

In [23]:
ax = mean_latest_hours_per_week['hour'].plot(
    figsize=(10, 6), color='k', alpha=0.2, title="Late hours per weeks")
ax.set_xlabel("time")
ax.set_ylabel("hour")
ax.plot(mean_latest_hours_per_week.index, ys)
Out[23]:
[<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x242fa511e48>]

Result

We can see that the late hours are decreasing over time (almost two hours during the last 12 years). There is no sign of regular death marches. In general, this could be a good sign, leading to a work-life balance.

6. Closing remarks

We’ve seen that various metrics and results can be easily created from a simple Git log output file. With Pandas, it’s possible to get to know the habits of the developers of software projects.

You can find the executable version of this article as Jupyter notebook on GitHub.

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Developers’ Habits (IntelliJ Edition)
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