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Activity health

Activity is an important indicator of health and risk in an open source package for several reasons, including:

  • Maintenance and bug fixes: Active projects are more likely to address bugs, security vulnerabilities, and compatibility issues in a timely manner. Regular commits and releases indicate that maintainers proactively work to improve and secure the codebase.

  • Community engagement: High activity levels, including frequent commits, pull requests, and issue discussions, suggest a vibrant and engaged community. This increases the likelihood of catching and fixing problems quickly.

  • Longevity and sustainability: Consistent activity over time is a sign that the project is likely to remain active in the future, reducing the risk of depending on abandoned or unmaintained software.

Trusty analyzes activity across multiple metrics, aggregating contributor and repository activity in a score from 0-10.

Contributor activity​

The contributor activity score is made up of two factors:

  1. Public repositories of contributors: The number of public repositories owned by the top 10 contributors to the package.
  2. Followers of contributors: The number of followers of the top 10 contributors.

For both factors, the top 10 is based on the contributors with the most followers and public repositories.

Repository activity​

The repository activity score is calculated from the following factors:

  1. Repository forks: The number of copies of a repository, indicating interest in the project and potential for contributions.
  2. Open issues: The count of unresolved problems, bugs, or feature requests, reflecting active engagement and areas needing attention in the project.
  3. Repository watchers: Users who have subscribed to notifications about repository activity.
  4. Number of contributors: The number of individual users who have made at least one commit to the repository, indicating the size and diversity of the active community around the project.
  5. Repository stars: The number of users that have bookmarked the repo as a favorite or to show appreciation.

These factors are all indicators of community engagement and interest in the project.