A Dataset of the Activity of the git Super-repository of Linux in 2012

This dataset documents the activity in the public
portion of the git Super-repository of the Linux kernel during
2012. In a distributed version control system, such as git, the
Super-repository is the collection of all the repositories (repos)
used for development. In such a Super-repository, some repos
will be accessible only by their owners (they are private, and
are located in places that are unreachable to other users) while
others are available to other members of the team. The latter
public repositories are used as avenues through which commits
flow from one developer to another. During the last six weeks of
2011, we proceeded to automatically discover the public portion
of the Super-repository of Linux. Then, in 2012, every 3 hrs,
each of these public repositories was queried to see what new
commits it had and what commits had disappeared from it
using a process we call continuous mining. This resulted in the
identification of 533,513 different commits across 451 different
public repositories and how they propagated through the Linux
Super-repository, including the repository of Linus Torvalds (i.e.,
the main repository of the Linux kernel). This information could
help us understand how kernel contributors use git, how they
collaborate and how commits are integrated into the Linux kernel
and into the repositories of organizations that distribute the
kernel.
This dataset is at http://turingmachine.org/2015/linuxGit