Version control repositories like CVS, Subversion or Git can be a real gold mine for software developers. They contain every change to the source code including the date (the "when"), the responsible developer (the "who"), as well as little message that describes the intention (the "what") of a change.
In this notebook, we will analyze the evolution of a very famous open-source project – the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel is the heart of some Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu or CentOS.
We get some first insights into the work of the development efforts by
- identifying the TOP 10 contributors and
- visualizing the commits over the years.
Linus Torvalds, the (spoiler alert!) main contributor to the Linux kernel (and also the creator of Git), created a mirror of the Linux repository on GitHub. It contains the complete history of kernel development for the last 13 years.