History vs. Codebase - a suggestion

Hi folks,

as we all know, a lot of projects have incorrect activity ratings because they develop primarily in branches, for instance. But if a whole repository is added, the codebase analysis will be totally wrong, as the same code is counted multiple times. This affects Agavi ( http://www.ohloh.net/projects/5907 ), for instance, where for months development has been done in a branch, and a lot of contributors aren't listed or listed incorrectly due to measurements being pulled from trunk.

So what about splitting up the two? Let people define one or more repositories that are used to measure activity, show commit history etc, and one path in one repository that is used to analyze the codebase, LOC, total cost etc.

Does that sound reasonable?

Oh and maybe give the ability to exclude parts of the project from the codebase analysis, so third-party stuff does not get taken into account. But if you add that feature, give projects that do so a "badge of honesty" or so ;)

+1 for branches

-veikko

I think the coolest solution would be to to be able to go through the directory structure and mark subdirs as a branch, release, or part of another project.

Yeah, unfortunately ohloh isn't friendly to projects who primarily develop in branches (read: serious projects)

branches have nothing to do with subdirs, thats only the branch-emulation from svn/cvs

Any news here? Ohloh team?

I'd really love to hear some feedback on this. Such a functionality is now getting really important as you added the project comparison tool recently. But the comparison simply is not fair as it does not measure activity or contributor count correctly.

Please with a cherry on top at least tell us you're considering it, or if not, why not.

Thanks a lot for an otherwise cool service.

-David

+1 for branching support for sure. This would be an excellent feature.