GitHub provides a number of ways to see the activity and status of a repository. There is quite a bit of information just on the splash page. The image below is taken from a popular web development framework Ruby on Rails.

Impact for ruby on rails shown on the splash page

Working top to bottom, we first see how many projects are using this framework ( Used by, 1.2 million). Watchers, who get updates about the project. Stars, that represent people who like the project. Stars also function something like bookmarks. Finally Forks, which we have talked about, that are copies of a repository. All of these things give you an idea of how useful and popular a project might be.

Below that we see the number of open issues and open pull requests. This can give you an idea of how well the project maintainers are doing in keeping up with bugs, suggested features. If you scan through the issues and pull requests you can also get an idea of how fast they get handled. The first page of Ruby on Rails issues are mostly just a few hours old at the time of writing.

Below that you can see the number of commits, branches, releases and contributes. If you click on the colored bar, you will see the languages that appear in the code base for this project.

Ruby on Rails is a popular and very active project with lots of contributors and a fairly large base of users. In short, we can say it has a large, active and supportive community for an open source project.

If you click on the Insights tab Insights icon, you will be taken to more information about the project.

Insights pulse view

You can look through the different information on the sidebar. Contributors can tell you who the biggest contributors are. Commits and code frequency give you more detailed information about the activity in the project. The network and forks provide a view into how the projects branches and forks.

Analytics for Project Management

If you are a maintainer or manager for a project, these analytics can be useful for making sure your project stays on track. You can also identify potential issues into how commits, branches and forks are being handled.

Choosing A Project To Used

One of the most common reasons researchers use GitHub is to use other people’s work. You can use these analytics to help you decide if you can use a project for your own work. For instance, lets say there is an R package on GitHub you are considering using.

You would first go to the splash page and look at the README. A well maintained and written README is a good sign. It should give you a pretty good idea how to use the project.

Then you would look at the activity shown on the file list, the issues and pull requests. If there has been recent activity and the issues seem to be handled quickly that is also a good sign. If the last activity was 5 years ago, perhaps it would be better to find another alternative as this project might be dead (or you could adopt the project as your own by forking it.)

Then you might go to the activity pages, look at the collaborator, see when the commits where.

There is no hard and fast rule for when you should use or not use a project. It depends not only on the status of the project you are considering, but also on what other alternatives exists and also your own tolerance for frustration.