New Enhanced Repo Insights Views

[j0siepy]

We've updated two of the repo insights views - contributors and code frequency - enables improved focus navigation to support point-by-point navigation, the ability to hide a series by interacting with the chart legend, as well as the ability to view and download the data as a CSV or PNG.

Contributors

• Click and drag date range selection has been replaced by a date range picker. The previous experience required mouse input and was not discoverable, while the new experience is always visible and navigable by keyboard.
• The current date range is more explicitly listed under the heading
• The contributor cards are now more responsive on small screens. The previous experience was locked to a 2 column view, where the new experience will wrap to a single column layout.
  Note: Contributor data is still a weekly rollup of commits.

Code frequency

• The 2 different axes are now differentiated by line style, as well as color.
• Data points are navigable and show more detail in a tooltip, previously you could only reference against the axes visually.

👂Try Out Our New Charts and Share Your Feedback!
We invite you to test our new charts and let us know how they work for you. If you have specific feedback, we’d love to hear it! Questions are encouraged too!

🤝 Share Your Experience
Have you encountered any issues related to the size and variation of data specific to your repositories?

📋Help Us Prioritize Updates
We are in the process of updating charts on GitHub and need your input! Which other charts would you find most valuable to update first?

If you would like to provide feedback anonymously, feel free to use this form.

To revert this update, click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the page, go to the feature preview menu, select “Enhanced Repo Insights Views” and click disable. If you choose to turn this feature off – please let us know why using the link listed above!

[Alex-302]

Designers ruined a thing that was worked fine. I mean the charts themselves.

Now I can't select a period and compare the activity of contributors for a specific time period, especially - short, only pre-defined.
The old is not perfect, but the only minor problem when using it is that sometimes it's hard to choose the exact time interval.

Old

New

The previous experience required mouse input and was not discoverable

It was obvious for the audience of this site. The cursor changes when you move it on the graph.

The only notice is that it should have displayed a vertical line on mouseover, like in many apps with graphs

Details

Please allow the exact period to be chosen. I think it is not hard:)
And revert graph style.

---

Another thing to remind - few years ago they removed the Punch Card, which could be used to track your overall activity by days of the week (not Contribution Graph in profile).

[Adria-indico]

This date picker isn't even working or am I missing something? There's no 'Set' or 'Ok' btn to actually make use of the desired date -_-

[Hallelujah1105]

The only reason to use this feature was to see contributions over all time (default), over last ~year (maintainers), over first ~year (original authors), over some specific time range. Selecting the range by mouse was quick and intuitive, graph itself was looking fantastic. And this change totally destroys the main purpose of this view. I don't care about specific numbers when I hover the graph, I can see the numbers I need below the graph, where you see commits number over time range per contributor.

[wenzeslaus]

While the downloads and a quick way of getting last X months/years are good, the arbitrary range and selection of commits is a show stopper for me. I just switched back. Showing lines changed as opposed to commits is now missing even in the old view (I'm not sure if that's new or old behavior).

[KK68HK]

Förvirrande men inget i mot vad det har varit över åren.Jag har inte förstått något.Jag flytta från tanten för det va jobbigt ingen förstod vad jag höll på med inte jag heller.jag va döende i början av 2021 låg i respirator i 18 dygn efter det så har jag försökt förstå mig på vad det är jag håller på med jag kunde inte fråga någon för då trodde dom att jag hade psykos.Jag känner ingen en idag som ens pratar om crypto.Idag har jag ju börja förstå lite mer då blir det lite lättare.Jag har ju iallafall tid för jag blev sjukpansionär förra året.Jag tackar er alla som har bidragit ❤️

[sebthom]

Although I appreciate the ability to hover over the graph and view a tooltip with details, I am not pleased with the other design changes.

1. The new graphs look very blurry and agitated. They also lack dates on the horizontal for better orientation without first having to hover around. Just compare the following screenshots. The new graph looks like a wave form of a distorted sound signal and because of the too thick lines it is harder to see what's going on.

2. The old graph had the ability to zoom using a sliding window into interesting areas. This feature is missing on the new version and you only have a dropdown list where you can select some fixed time frames. You can no longer zoom into a 3 month time frame two years ago.

3. The absence of the light gray background on all the tiles now makes the entire page look bland and dull.

4. In the updated design, the list of contributors now lists everyone, including those with 0 commits within the selected time frame. In the previous design, only contributors who were active during the chosen period were shown.

[shkesar]

+1 Lines are very thick. The color pops out too much.

[hgy59]

2. The old graph had the ability to zoom using a sliding window into interesting areas. This feature is missing on the new version and you only have a dropdown list where you can select some fixed time frames. You can no longer zoom into a 3 month time frame two years ago.

If you insist on the dropdown list, the list needs an additional entry to define custom start and end time.
However, selecting by mouse is much more convenient.

Otherwise the Contributors page has no value for me anymore....

[pkazmier]

Agreed. The new graphs are not as sharp and crisp as the old ones.

[jrafanie]

Agreed on the graph drawing looking terrible. The Y axis range selection is wrong as it appears to pick values that don't have all data points on the graph. Perhaps that's why the lines are blurry/agitated? That, plus the line is just too thick. I don't know. There's so many examples in this issue showing the superior graph drawing before. Hover over on the old graph might be useful but not how they're drawn now.

I like the hover over tooltip type behavior but I don't understand why the hover over for a specific date on the top graph doesn't do anything with the contributors below it. For my repo, I can see 20 commits on a specific day but hovering over it I can't see who contributed on that day because the hover over doesn't seem to affect the contributor list below it. I guess I don't see the point for the hover over for a date if it doesn't really do much.

I like the mouse data selection but ignoring that, the graphs are not very helpful to me.

I had to revert back to the original version. Hopefully, they can address many of the most common problems listed here.

[jpellman]

Click and drag date range selection has been replaced by a date range picker.

Why can't we have both? The click and drag date selection felt extremely intuitive and natural and this new UI update feels like a clunky regression. Having the option to select predefined ranges would be an improvement though in my view.

[chadwhitacre]

The click and drag date selection felt extremely intuitive and natural and this new UI update feels like a clunky regression.

Click-and-drag date selection is was a very common action for me on the contributors tab. For example, I am researching an upcoming podcast guest's past work and I clicked into contributors for a certain project that they supposedly founded 10+ years ago, and through long habit I had clicked and dragged to highlight the early years of the project on where the old chart used to be before realizing that my cheese was no longer there. 🐭

[AJenbo]

It's useful when you are looking performance of someone who started 9 months ago, which isn't an option in the drop down.

[gsum]

Two Issues with the New Design:

1. Previously, the graph allowed for selecting specific time periods by simply dragging, which is no longer possible.
2. Looking through contributions in the individual's table, we could figure out when a person came to the org and left, now it is not possible.

[dumpstarlife]

Agreed.
Also, contributions for the other repo has been turned off or switched to a close knit group.

[norwd]

I feel like the designers got a little carried away with this one, not that I don't appreciate visual changes, but this was a functional feature that I used almost daily at work and now the information I need isn't accessible in the new view.

• When I hover over the code frequency graph, half the graph is almost invisible (at least in dark mode). And the fact that as I move the cursor it flickers between showing additions and deletions, which is distracting (and potentially dangerous for those with epilepsy).
  
• The dotted line for deletions is also very difficult to read when the line is too sharp, which happens in many repos when changes only happen in bursts.
  
• For the contributors graph, previously there was the ability to select a range and drag it to keep the same time period but see the changes as new people joined and old people left a project. The new view allows me to view the number of commits on a given day, but not to see trends over a custom time period.
  
• I like the ability to select from a drop down some common time periods, but having it stuck to the last N days or months, I miss the ability to look at the N days since person X joined or N months since person Y left.
• I also find the line smoothing in the new view to make it too difficult to match a specific person's contributions to the main graph. This is something I also do at least once a week. The new view smooths each individual contributor and this makes the shape too different from the main graph to easily identify "ooh look this person is responsible for this blip in the main graph" or "ahh yes I remember this person was on leave around then so that's why there's this dip".

[norwd]

To be clear, I like the new look, I just want the features back 🙂

[9001]

Rather than remove the zoom feature because it required mouse input, how about adding support for zooming with touch gestures in addition?

Like others have mentioned already, I did not find the previous zoom feature to be "not discoverable", quite the contrary -- it was entirely intuitive. This change has unfortunately made the contributors page far less useful for me.

[FlorianMichael]

I found an issue the new design has, looking at it:

Compared to the old one:

The commit count of both accounts FlorianMichael and FormallyMyles is wrong and doesn't show any activity in the graph either. The repository in question: https://github.com/ViaVersion/viaversion.com.

Beside that, I really agree with what Alex-302, sebthom and all others here said.

[penn201500]

Just found the same issue. The old version is much more straightforward if the contributors' commit count differs significantly.

[heystewart]

Similar issue here. Four year project, and one day four years ago there were 120 commits for some reason by one person ... fifty developers' graphs are all meaningless since they are now scaled down by 120.

[jlong4223]

Noticing the similar issue on my end. It doesn't appear to be reflecting commit numbers after August 4th in the total commits per user.

[JuliaAya]

same here. It does not show any new activities (does not reflect the number of commits).

[svgeesus]

Overall I like the new design. The default graph is clearer, and although the date-range axis has coarser labelling the tooltips make up for that.

Being able to select the period from a dropdown is great; I work on a repo with commits going back to 1998 (yes really, we imported the old cvs commit history) and it really helps to see who is currently active without having the graphs distorted by, say, a burst of activity 15 years ago from people who since stopped contributing.

It would be useful to be able to link to a particular view; the url remains constant regardless of which period is selected.

[svgeesus]

I can't comment on the code frequency changes because I just get "There are too many commits to generate this graph."

[jsoref]

In case the project team wants an example, here's a public one: https://github.com/powerdns/pdns/graphs/code-frequency

[MatthewRyanRead]

Same here, and I still see it even when I turn off the new view. So not only are the graphs now worse, but for the projects with lots of activity (where the graphs would be the most useful!) you can't see anything except the commit graph.

[adjkant]

A big +1 to custom range as before! FWIW I understand there's likely some limitations on BE data granularity in consideration, but I don't need it to be day granular. As at least a compromise can we have monthly granular?

The UI for selection was also great before for custom ranges. Would be great to bring that back + have it shown after as a "[month] to [month]" dual input you can select from to tune further

[ilyagr]

I find it valuable to be able to select arbitrary date ranges where the project or a particular person look more/less active. Now, it seems that the only options are "the last X months/weeks/days".

[neekon91]

We've updated two of the repo insights views - contributors and code frequency - to use an new SVG-based solution which enables improved focus navigation to support point-by-point navigation, the ability to hide a series by interacting with the chart legend, as well as the ability to view and download the data as a CSV or PNG.

Contributors

Click and drag date range selection has been replaced by a date range picker. The previous experience required mouse input and was not discoverable, while the new experience is always visible and navigable by keyboard. The current date range is more explicitly listed under the heading The contributor cards are now more responsive on small screens. The previous experience was locked to a 2 column view, where the new experience will wrap to a single column layout. Note: Contributor data is still a weekly rollup of commits.

Code frequency

The 2 different axes are now differentiated by line style, as well as color. Data points are navigable and show more detail in a tooltip, previously you could only reference against the axes visually.

👂Try Out Our New Charts and Share Your Feedback! We invite you to test our new charts and let us know how they work for you. If you have specific feedback, we’d love to hear it! Questions are encouraged too!

🤝 Share Your Experience Have you encountered any issues related to the size and variation of data specific to your repositories?

📋Help Us Prioritize Updates We are in the process of updating charts on GitHub and need your input! Which other charts would you find most valuable to update first?

If you would like to provide feedback anonymously, feel free to use this form.

Thank you for your support and feedback!

Very Cool just wanted to draw your attention to a small bug. When hovering over the graph a tooltip appears and the date is incorrect. It always says Sunday

[svgeesus]

If counts are grouped by week then it will always show the same day of the week

[KK68HK]

Om det va mig du ville ha svar ifrån så kan jag svara att det va dom jobbigaste åren i mitt liv då har jag levt ett ganska jobbigt liv .Jag har skrivit till alla möjliga på nätet om någon har svarat så har det varit spydiga svar någon har varit trevlig.och vad jag en har gjort så fungerade det inte.jag vet inte ens nu vad det igentligen handlat om.Vad jag en skulle göra så kosta det och jag har inte fått ut en enda dollar 2datorer sönder 2 paddor sönder samtidigt när jag ha varit sjuk så svar på frågan är jag tror inte att det finns någon som skulle palla så här länge.Jag hade knappt någon erfarenhet av data så kunde jag inte så bra engelska och det gick inte attgöra översättning varken på tel eller datan och ingen som jag fråga svara för dom trodde attvjag kom från en annan planet.Så att få crypton att slå i europa så blir det nog svårt men inte omöjlig.

[spacey-sooty]

Commits are inconsistent see https://github.com/wpilibsuite/allwpilib/graphs/contributors all for @spacey-sooty on this graph compared to last 12 months. Last 12 months shows an extra commit (and is the same as it was pre change)

[spacey-sooty]

Would be nice to be able to see the overview for a specific date and or date range as well.

[dlwiii]

Looks like not all contributors are shown. I know there are commits by certain people and they do not show up. Any idea why?

[jonathancross]

I was informed above that only commits to the default branch are now counted.

[ssalka]

I need the ability to filter the date range by dragging on the Contributors chart. The new changes are – for this use case – a total regression, and makes the Contributors page far less useful. I don't have any real problems with the styling changes, but I also thought the page was 100% fine before and didn't need styling changes.

[aloucks]

Yep, that was my take on it as well. I was trying to see who were the contributors at the start of the project (years ago) which was not possible in the new view.

[zubyul]

Im the biggest contributor to my project but am missing entirely???

[mkow]

I'm seeing the same issue in one of my projects - the top contributor is missing.

[QuotableWater7]

about 70% of my commits are missing, which is better than the 90% you had missing awhile back (keep going!!)

[GuillaumeTong]

I believe the line count contributions could be made more "relevant" if we could choose to ignore whitespace-only edits.

A barrier to this may potentially be how much more computation this would need, especially for bigger repository with more code/more commits, but it would be nice to have it as an option

[aloucks]

This is now broken. There's no way to zoom in on a date range in the past. Having the drop down for resent periods is fine but PLEASE bring back the ability to select a range by clicking and dragging on the graph.

[jrafanie]

@aloucks FYI, you can revert this behavior and go back to the old contributors / repo insights page for now... it was at the bottom of the post. That's what I'm doing until they release changes to account for the many issues raised in this discussion.

To revert this update, click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the page, go to the feature preview menu, select “Enhanced Repo Insights Views” and click disable. If you choose to turn this feature off – please let us know why using the link listed above!

[aloucks]

Thank you! The old graph is much nicer. As I stated, adding the dropdown for recent periods is fine but please keep the ability to zoom in.

The old graph gives a crosshair when you hover over it, which feels pretty intuitive that something can be selected.

[Drewpeifer]

Restricting it to the main / default branch and excluding merge commits basically means that anyone who doesn't commit directly to default doesn't show up as a contributor? Is that correct?

[Drewpeifer]

Gotcha, i appreciate the explanation and I guess that makes sense. I make PRs for feature branches, squash+merge them into a staging branch, and periodically merge that into main/default. I guess squash+merge means all my commits that eventually hit main are merge commits, and therefore not counted (even though they have an author)?

[jsoref]

I haven't thought through what happens when people squash-merge mixed author items. You could test by creating a test repository with some commits w/ me as the author, temporarily put this in ~/.gitconfig

[user]
# Please adapt and uncomment the following lines:
	email = 2119212+jsoref@users.noreply.github.com
	name = Josh Soref

Then commit some things, then remove those lines and commit more things, then push the stuff to a branch, then create a PR, and squash merge. See what happens.

[TadeKDev]

Yeah Seems good. I've ever met that. It'll works well.

[Drewpeifer]

@jsoref no worries, it's not a huge deal because these charts (at least to me) are just trivia, but no need to test mixed author either, i am the only author: We have a very simple setup, I am the only regular contributor to a React app with multiple PR's a day, feature => staging => main every time. But, insights says i have 19 commits across all history (should be exponentially higher).

I am the only author of the PR commits, i am the merger of the PRs into staging, and i am the merger of staging into main most days too. Seems like all that activity is lost because of the "excluding merge commits". Not a huge deal, but i think our setup is pretty commonplace so I have to imagine others are in the same boat.

[jsoref]

No one should really care about metrics in a sense that absolute commit counts matter. ... There are people who actively game metrics on GitHub...

Usually when looking at a repository, the goal is to get a sense of comparison contributor to contributor (or time period to time period), so if you contribute only on weekdays, that should show through (and if another user only contributes on weekends, that should show through). Or if one contributor made a lot of contributions, but only as an occasional thing, that should show through.

In general, what I hope people get from metrics is "responsiveness"/"availability window"/"size of core contributor base"/"diversity of non-core contributors", and possibly "consumers" (although at least today, the dependents view is really unhelpful since it isn't sortable/usefully sorted).

[OiYouYeahYou]

Glad contributors tool in an incognito window helps avoid this regression. But are there any staff actually looking and acknowledging feedback? I'm hoping we're not back to the bad-old-days of GitHub

[jrafanie]

FYI, @OiYouYeahYou you don't need to use incognito. You can opt-out for now. It's at the bottom of the original post, copied here:

To revert this update, click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the page, go to the feature preview menu, select “Enhanced Repo Insights Views” and click disable. If you choose to turn this feature off – please let us know why using the link listed above!

I hope they're looking at the feedback here and will provide an update to address many of our concerns raised in this discussion.

[DNin01]

At least (now) you can edit the URL parameters manually to filter to a custom week range:

.../graphs/contributors?from=<MONTH>%2F<DAY>%2F<YEAR>&to=<MONTH>%2F<DAY>%2F<YEAR>

When you do this, the dropdown menu even says "Custom range", acknowledging that you didn't choose one of the provided options.

[norwd]

@j0siepy, is there any news from @github on whether there are any plans to change this enhancement?

There is another public preview feedback discussion that I'm involved in that has lots of interaction from @github and even a regularly updated section of the top post with known issues and planned fixes. And in many ways that preview is actively broken, but most people (myself included) are reacting positively:

However on this thread there hasn't been an update about what feedback has been taken onboard, or what changes will be made before this enhancement is the default insights view. In fact just looking at the reactions, it's clear that most people aren't happy with the changed insights, even though they aren't particularly buggy, not nearly as buggy as the other preview feature I mentioned.

There's lots of ideas and requests in this thread but is anything being planned / in the works?

[dvandersluis]

I'd love it if contributor insights could be added for an organization as well. For organizations with many repositories, there's no easy way to see contributions over time for the entire org.

[jrafanie]

Now, this is an enhancement idea. Org level contributors over time starting with commits would be amazing. Add PRs, reviews, merges, issues, etc., and you can really get a better idea of who's involved, where and when. Honestly, it can snowball into a large set of features so starting small seems like a good idea.

[klondikemarlen]

I liked the old one better? It did everything I needed and was easy to read.