alt Hacker NewsI ran these commands on a number of codebases I work on and I have to say they paint a very different picture than the reality I know to be true.
> git shortlog -sn --no-merges
Is the most egregious. In one codebase there is a developer's name at the top of the list who outpaced the number 2 by almost 3x the number of commits. That developer no longer works at the company? Crisis? Nope, the opposite. The developer was a net-negative to the team in more ways than one, didn't understand the codebase very well at all, and just happened to commit every time they turned around for some reason.
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Also - be careful of automated workflow that uses a single persons credential.. skews this by a lot.
So that person, on one central codebase at a company I work for, is me.
Assuming I'm not ego-mad, I like to think this is because I built the project from the ground up before handing it over to the rest of the team.
These days other people commit more often than I do, but my name is still dominant, and probably will be for some time.
Everything in context. This is one of many reasons I'm a proponent of squash-and-merge. If a change really needs more than one permanent commit, it should probably be split up or if absolutely necessary should be on a feature branch maintaining similar process. Under this process, feature branches are not squashed.
This leaves developers to commit locally and comment as much or little as they like.