makeHumansTxt

A script to generate a humans.txt file listing all contributors to a Git project, with multiple ways to measure contributions.

Overview

This script analyzes a Git repository to identify all contributors and generates a humans.txt file - a standard way to credit the people behind a website or project. Contributors can be ranked by different metrics: commit count, total lines added/changed, or lines currently remaining in the codebase.

Usage

# Basic usage (counts by commits)
makeHumansTxt

# Count by different metrics
makeHumansTxt --commits           # Count by number of commits (default)
makeHumansTxt --lines-added       # Count by total lines added/changed
makeHumansTxt --lines-current     # Count by lines currently in codebase

# Show actual counts next to names
makeHumansTxt --show-counts
makeHumansTxt --lines-current --show-counts

# Get help
makeHumansTxt --help

The script outputs the humans.txt content to standard output. To save it to a file:

makeHumansTxt --lines-current > humans.txt

Options

• --commits: Count by number of commits (default behavior)
• --lines-added: Count by total lines added/changed across all commits
• --lines-current: Count by lines currently remaining in the codebase (using git blame)
• --show-counts: Display the actual counts next to contributor names
• --help, -h: Show help message

Output Format

The generated file follows this format:

Made by the following team:

* Most Active Contributor
* Second Most Active Contributor
* Third Most Active Contributor
* ...

With --show-counts, the format includes metrics:

Made by the following team:

* Alice Johnson (127 commits)
* Bob Smith (89 lines currently in codebase)
* Charlie Brown (1,234 lines added/changed)
* ...

How Each Method Works

--commits (Default)

1. Analyzes all commits in the current Git repository
2. Extracts author names from commit messages
3. Counts commits per author
4. Sorts by commit count (descending)

--lines-added

1. Uses git log --numstat to get line changes for each commit
2. Sums added and deleted lines for each author across all commits
3. Provides a measure of total code contribution volume
4. Sorts by total lines changed (descending)

--lines-current

1. Uses git blame on all text files in the repository
2. Counts how many lines each author has in the current codebase
3. Shows current ownership/responsibility for the code
4. Excludes binary files automatically
5. Sorts by current line count (descending)

Use Cases

• Website credits: Add a humans.txt file to your website's root directory
• Project documentation: Include contributor credits in project documentation
• Team recognition: Generate a list of team members sorted by contribution
• Annual reports: Create contributor summaries for yearly reviews

Examples

# Generate and save humans.txt
makeHumansTxt > humans.txt

# Preview the output
makeHumansTxt

# Generate for a specific directory
cd /path/to/project && makeHumansTxt > humans.txt

# Combine with other information
echo "/* Our amazing team */" > humans.txt
makeHumansTxt >> humans.txt
echo "/* Visit https://example.com */" >> humans.txt

Requirements

• Git repository with commit history
• Standard Unix utilities (awk, sort)

About humans.txt

The humans.txt file is a web standard (http://humanstxt.org/) that provides a way to credit the people behind a website. It's typically placed in the root directory of a website and can be referenced in HTML with:

<link type="text/plain" rel="author" href="humans.txt" />

Notes

• The script considers all commits in the repository history
• Author names are extracted exactly as they appear in Git commits
• Contributors with different email addresses but same names are treated as separate entries
• The output includes asterisks (*) as bullet points for each contributor
• Empty lines are included for proper formatting