Counting Commits by Author per Day with Git

Introduction

In the world of Git, sometimes it becomes necessary to know the contributions of each author over a period of time. This can help in gauging productivity, contributions, or even pinpointing when the most commits were made by a particular author. Here, I will share some simple Git commands that you can run to count commits by an author per day.

Counting Commits

Basic Command

The most straightforward way to count commits by an author per day is by using the following command:

# This command counts the number of commits by a given author
# and groups them by date.
git log --author="<AUTHOR_NAME>" | grep Date | awk '{print ": "$4" "$3" "$6}' | uniq -c

Adding a Date Range

If you are interested in counting commits within a specific date range, use this command:

# This command filters the commits by date and then counts them.
git log --author="<AUTHOR_NAME>" --before="<BEFORE_DATE>" --after="<AFTER_DATE>" | grep Date | awk '{print ": "$4" "$3" "$6}' | uniq -c

Example

Here's an example command that counts the number of commits made by an author named "my name" between November 10, 2020, and June 30, 2021:

# Example usage with a specific author and date range
git log --author="my name" --before="2021-06-30" --after="2020-11-10" | grep Date | awk '{print ": "$4" "$3" "$6}' | uniq -c

Conclusion

By using these simple Git commands, you can easily find out how many commits were made by a particular author and on which days. This can be a helpful metric for many use-cases, such as auditing or evaluating the contributions of team members.