git-credit

Give credit where it's due -- precise per-author contribution stats that see through squash merges.

A contribution analysis tool that accurately attributes lines of code to individual authors, even across squash-merged pull requests, with support for file exclusion filters.

Installation

Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

brew tap mscheltienne/tap
brew install mscheltienne/tap/git-credit

From crates.io

cargo install git-credit

Pre-built binaries

Pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows are available on the GitHub Releases page.

From source

git clone https://github.com/mscheltienne/git-credit.git
cd git-credit
cargo install --path .

Usage

# Analyze the current repository
git-credit

# Analyze a specific repository
git-credit --repo /path/to/repo

# Limit to the last 50 commits
git-credit --rev HEAD~50..HEAD

# Only include commits after a date
git-credit --since 2025-01-01

# Exclude files from stats (repeatable)
git-credit --exclude "*.lock" --exclude "*.generated.*"

# Output as JSON instead of a table
git-credit --format json

# Include bot accounts (dependabot, pre-commit-ci, etc. are excluded by default)
git-credit --bots

# Use an external .mailmap (overrides any .mailmap inside the repository)
git-credit --mailmap-file /path/to/.mailmap

# Skip GitHub API lookups (faster, but squash merges are attributed to the merge author
# only)
git-credit --no-github

Mailmap

By default git-credit applies the repository's .mailmap (or the file referenced by mailmap.file in git config) to canonicalize author identities. Pass --mailmap-file <PATH> to use an external file instead — useful when invoking git-credit against a clone you don't want to mutate, or when aggregating mailmap entries across many repositories outside git-credit.

The external mailmap replaces the repo's own; the two are not merged.

Bot filtering

Bot accounts (identified by [bot]@ in their email address) are excluded from the output by default. Use --bots to include them. When bots are excluded, the summary line shows how many were filtered.

GitHub authentication

To attribute squash-merged PRs to individual authors, git-credit needs a GitHub token. It resolves the token in this order:

1. --token flag
2. GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable
3. GH_TOKEN environment variable
4. gh auth token (the GitHub CLI)

If no token is found, git-credit runs in --no-github mode automatically with a warning.

Example table output

╭──────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────┬───────┬─────┬───────╮
│ Author                   ┆ Contributions ┆ PRs ┆ +     ┆ -   ┆ Total │
╞══════════════════════════╪═══════════════╪═════╪═══════╪═════╪═══════╡
│ Alice <alice@example.com>┆ 12            ┆ 8   ┆ 1,542 ┆ 389 ┆ 1,931 │
├╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌┼╌╌╌╌╌╌╌┤
│ Bob <bob@example.com>    ┆ 8             ┆ 5   ┆ 876   ┆ 201 ┆ 1,077 │
╰──────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────┴───────┴─────┴───────╯

2 authors (3 bots excluded), 20 commits walked, 13 squash merges expanded

JSON output

--format json emits one record per processed commit. For squash-merge PRs attributions carries one entry per re-attributed author; for regular commits the array has a single entry. commits[] is sorted by author_date ascending, with sha as a tie-breaker.

Each commit also carries an accurate flag. It is true for normally-processed commits (regular commits and successfully-expanded squash-merge PRs) and false when a squash-merge could not be expanded — e.g. the GitHub API rate-limited the run, returned an error, or no token was available — and the commit fell back to merge-author attribution. Consumers can use this flag to retry later when the API recovers.

{
  "commits": [
    {
      "sha": "abc1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef12345",
      "author_date": "2026-04-17T14:23:51Z",
      "is_squash_pr": false,
      "attributions": [
        {
          "name": "Alice Smith",
          "email": "alice@example.com",
          "additions": 42,
          "deletions": 7,
          "is_pr_author": false
        }
      ],
      "accurate": true
    },
    {
      "sha": "def987...",
      "author_date": "2026-04-18T09:12:00Z",
      "is_squash_pr": true,
      "attributions": [
        {
          "name": "Alice Smith",
          "email": "alice@example.com",
          "additions": 75,
          "deletions": 12,
          "is_pr_author": true
        },
        {
          "name": "Bob Jones",
          "email": "bob@example.com",
          "additions": 25,
          "deletions": 4,
          "is_pr_author": true
        }
      ],
      "accurate": true
    },
    {
      "sha": "fed321...",
      "author_date": "2026-04-19T16:05:22Z",
      "is_squash_pr": false,
      "attributions": [
        {
          "name": "Alice Smith",
          "email": "alice@example.com",
          "additions": 50,
          "deletions": 10,
          "is_pr_author": false
        }
      ],
      "accurate": false
    }
  ],
  "summary": {
    "total_commits_walked": 3,
    "squash_merges_expanded": 1,
    "bots_excluded": 0
  }
}

In the example above, the third commit was a squash-merge whose PR expansion failed (rate limit, API error, or missing token); git-credit emits it with is_squash_pr: false, the merge committer as the sole attribution, and accurate: false so the caller knows to retry.

Development

Prerequisites

• Rust (MSRV: 1.88)
• pre-commit
• cargo-deny (optional, for dependency auditing)
• cargo-llvm-cov (optional, for coverage)

Setup

git clone https://github.com/mscheltienne/git-credit.git
cd git-credit
pre-commit install
cargo build

Commands

cargo build              # Build
cargo test               # Run all tests
cargo clippy             # Lint
cargo fmt                # Format
cargo deny check         # Audit dependencies
cargo llvm-cov           # Coverage report

License

MIT