Code Changes Lines

Question: What is the sum of the number of lines touched (lines added plus lines removed) in all changes to the source code during a certain period?

When introducing changes to the source code, developers touch (edit, add, remove) lines of the source code files. This metric considers the aggregated number of lines touched by changes to the source code performed during a certain period. This means that if a certain line in a certain file is touched in three different changes, it will count as three lines. Since in most source code management systems it is difficult or impossible to tell accurately if a lines was removed and then added, or just edited, we will consider editing a line as removing it and later adding it back with a new content. Each of those (removing and adding) will be considered as “touching”. Therefore, if a certain line in a certain file is edited three times, it will count as six different changes (three removals, and three additions).

For this matter, we consider changes to the source code as defined in Code Changes. Lines of code will be any line of a source code file, including comments and blank lines.

Objectives

Volume of coding activity: Although code changes can be a proxy to the coding activity of a project, not all changes are the same. Considering the aggregated number of lines touched in all changes gives a complementary idea of how large the changes are, and in general, how large is the volume of coding activity.

Visualizations

Steps

1. Click on the Visualize option in the sidebar and click on + to pick your visualization type. Choose Area as visualization type.

2. Select git as index.

3. For Metrics, we’ll need to add 2 of them, that is two Y-axis. For the first one set the y-axis aggregation to Sum and field to lines_added. Set Lines added for the custom label. For the 2nd Y-axis, set the aggregation to Sum and field to painless_inverted_lines_removed_git. Set the custom label to Lines removed.

   

   

4. For Buckets, pick the bucket type of X-axis.

5. Set the aggregation to Date Histogram and field to grimoire_creation_date and interval to Auto. Set Time for the custom label.

   

6. In the end, your visualization should like the following,

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