askgit

askgit is a command-line tool for running SQL queries on git repositories.
It's meant for ad-hoc querying of git repositories on disk through a common interface (SQL), as an alternative to patching together various shell commands.
It can execute queries that look like:
sql
-- how many commits have been authored by [email protected]?
SELECT count(*) FROM commits WHERE author_email = '[email protected]'

You can try queries on public git repositories without installing anything at https://try.askgit.com/

More in-depth examples and documentation can be found below.
Also checkout our newsletter to stay up to date with feature releases and interesting queries and use cases.

Installation
Homebrew

brew tap askgitdev/askgit
brew install askgit

Pre-Built Binaries

The latest releases should have pre-built binaries for Mac and Linux.
You can download and add the askgit binary somewhere on your $PATH to use.
libaskgit.so is also available to be loaded as a SQLite run-time extension.

Go

libgit2 is a build dependency (used via git2go) and must be available on your system for linking.

The following (long ?) go install commands can be used to install a binary via the go toolchain.

On Mac:
CGO_CFLAGS=-DUSE_LIBSQLITE3 CGO_LDFLAGS=-Wl,-undefined,dynamic_lookup go install -tags="sqlite_vtable,vtable,sqlite_json1,static,system_libgit2" github.com/askgitdev/[email protected]

On Linux:
CGO_CFLAGS=-DUSE_LIBSQLITE3 CGO_LDFLAGS=-Wl,--unresolved-symbols=ignore-in-object-files go install -tags="sqlite_vtable,vtable,sqlite_json1,static,system_libgit2" github.com/askgitdev/[email protected]

See the Makefile for more context.
Checking out this repository and running make in the root will produce two files in the .build directory:

1. askgit - the CLI binary (which can then be moved into your $PATH for use)


2. libaskgit.so - a shared object file SQLite extension that can be used by SQLite directly

Using Docker

Build an image locally using docker

docker build -t askgit:latest .

Or use an official image from docker hub

docker pull augmentable/askgit:latest

Running commands

askgit operates on a git repository. This repository needs to be attached as a volume. This example uses the (bash) built-in command pwd for the current working directory

[pwd] Print the absolute pathname of the current working directory.

docker run --rm -v `pwd`:/repo:ro augmentable/askgit "SELECT * FROM commits"

Running commands from STDIN

For piping commands via STDIN, the docker command needs to be told to run non-interactively, as well as attaching the repository at /repo.

cat query.sql | docker run --rm -i -v `pwd`:/repo:ro augmentable/askgit

Public API

We maintain a free to use, public API for running queries (executed in an AWS Lambda function).
See this page for more information.

Usage

askgit -h

Will output the most up to date usage instructions for your version of the CLI.
Typically the first argument is a SQL query string:

askgit "SELECT * FROM commits"

Your current working directory will be used as the path to the git repository to query by default.
Use the --repo flag to specify an alternate path, or even a remote repository reference (http(s) or ssh).
askgit will clone the remote repository to a temporary directory before executing a query.

You can also pass a query in via stdin:

cat query.sql | askgit

By default, output will be an ASCII table.
Use --format json or --format csv for alternatives.
Use -v to print execution logs to stderr.
This can be useful for understanding what API calls a query may be making, or similar runtime information.
See -h for all the options.

Tables and Functions
Local Git Repository

The following tables access a git repository in the current directory by default.
If the --repo flag is specified, they will use the path provided there instead.
A parameter (usually the first) can also be provided to any of the tables below to override the default repo path.
For instance, SELECT * FROM commits('https://github.com/askgitdev/askgit') will clone this repo to a temporary directory on disk and return its commits.

commits

Similar to git log, the commits table includes all commits in the history of the currently checked out commit.

| Column | Type |
|-----------------|----------|
| hash | TEXT |
| message | TEXT |
| author_name | TEXT |
| author_email | TEXT |
| author_when | DATETIME |
| committer_name | TEXT |
| committer_email | TEXT |
| committer_when | DATETIME |
| parents | INT |

Params:
1. repository - path to a local (on disk) or remote (http(s)) repository
2. rev - return commits starting at this revision (i.e. branch name or SHA), defaults to HEAD

```sql
-- return all commits starting at HEAD
SELECT * FROM commits

-- specify an alternative repo on disk
SELECT * FROM commits('/some/path/to/repo')

-- clone a remote repo and use it
SELECT * FROM commits('https://github.com/askgitdev/askgit')

-- use the default repo, but provide an alternate branch
SELECT * FROM commits('', 'some-ref')
```

refs

| Column | Type |
|-----------|------|
| name | TEXT |
| type | TEXT |
| remote | TEXT |
| full_name | TEXT |
| hash | TEXT |
| target | TEXT |

Params:
1. repository - path to a local (on disk) or remote (http(s)) repository

stats

| Column | Type |
|-----------|------|
| file_path | TEXT |
| additions | INT |
| deletions | INT |

Params:
1. repository - path to a local (on disk) or remote (http(s)) repository
2. rev - commit hash (or branch/tag name) to use for retrieving stats, defaults to HEAD
3. to_rev - commit hash to calculate stats relative to

```sql
-- return stats of HEAD
SELECT * FROM stats

-- return stats of a specific commit
SELECT * FROM stats('', 'COMMIT_HASH')

-- return stats for every commit in the current history
SELECT commits.hash, stats.* FROM commits, stats('', commits.hash)
```

files

| Column | Type |
|------------|------|
| path | TEXT |
| executable | BOOL |
| contents | TEXT |

Params:
1. repository - path to a local (on disk) or remote (http(s)) repository
2. rev - commit hash (or branch/tag name) to use for retrieving files in, defaults to HEAD

blame

Similar to git blame, the blame table includes blame information for all files in the current HEAD.

| Column | Type |
|-------------|----------|
| line_no | INT |
| commit_hash | TEXT |

Params:
1. repository - path to a local (on disk) or remote (http(s)) repository
2. rev - commit hash (or branch/tag name) to use for retrieving blame information from, defaults to HEAD
3. file_path - path of file to blame

Utilities
JSON

The SQLite JSON1 extension is included for working with JSON data.

toml_to_json

Scalar function that converts toml to json.

```SQL
SELECT toml_to_json('[some-toml]')

-- +-----------------------------+
-- | TOML_TO_JSON('[SOME-TOML]') |
-- +-----------------------------+
-- | {"some-toml":{}} |
-- +-----------------------------+
```

xml_to_json

Scalar function that converts xml to json.

```SQL
SELECT xml_to_json('hello')

-- +-------------------------------------------+
-- | XML_TO_JSON('HELLO') |
-- +-------------------------------------------+
-- | {"some-xml":"hello"} |
-- +-------------------------------------------+
```

yaml_to_json and yml_to_json

Scalar function that converts yaml to json.

```SQL
SELECT yaml_to_json('hello: world')

-- +------------------------------+
-- | YAML_TO_JSON('HELLO: WORLD') |
-- +------------------------------+
-- | {"hello":"world"} |
-- +------------------------------+
```

go_mod_to_json

Scalar function that parses a go.mod file and returns a JSON representation of it.

SQL
SELECT go_mod_to_json('<contents-of-go.mod-file>')

str_split

Helper for splitting strings on some separator.

```sql
SELECT str_split('hello,world', ',', 0)

-- +----------------------------------+
-- | STR_SPLIT('HELLO,WORLD', ',', 0) |
-- +----------------------------------+
-- | hello |
-- +----------------------------------+
```

```sql
SELECT str_split('hello,world', ',', 1)

-- +----------------------------------+
-- | STR_SPLIT('HELLO,WORLD', ',', 1) |
-- +----------------------------------+
-- | world |
-- +----------------------------------+
```

Enry Functions

Functions from the enry project are also available as SQL scalar functions

enry_detect_language

Supply a file path and some source code to detect the language.

sql
SELECT enry_detect_language('some/path/to/file.go', '<contents of file>')

enry_is_binary

Given a blob, determine if it's a binary file or not (returns 1 or 0).

sql
SELECT enry_is_binary('<contents of file>')

enry_is_configuration

Detect whether a file path is to a configuration file (returns 1 or 0).

sql
SELECT enry_is_configuration('some/path/to/file/config.json')

enry_is_documentation

Detect whether a file path is to a documentation file (returns 1 or 0).

sql
SELECT enry_is_documentation('some/path/to/file/README.md')

enry_is_dot_file

Detect whether a file path is to a dot file (returns 1 or 0).

sql
SELECT enry_is_dot_file('some/path/to/file/.gitignore')

enry_is_generated

Detect whether a file path is generated (returns 1 or 0).

sql
SELECT enry_is_generated('some/path/to/file/generated.go', '<contents of file>')

enry_is_image

Detect whether a file path is to an image (returns 1 or 0).

sql
SELECT enry_is_image('some/path/to/file/image.png')

enry_is_test

Detect whether a file path is to a test file (returns 1 or 0).

sql
SELECT enry_is_test('some/path/to/file/image.png')

enry_is_vendor

Detect whether a file path is to a vendored file (returns 1 or 0).

sql
SELECT enry_is_vendor('vendor/file.go')

GitHub API

You can use askgit to query the GitHub API (v4).
Constraints in your SQL query are pushed to the GitHub API as much as possible.
For instance, if your query includes an ORDER BY clause and if items can be ordered in the GitHub API response (on the specified column), your query can avoid doing a full table scan and rely on the ordering returned by the API.

Authenticating

You must provide an authentication token in order to use the GitHub API tables.
You can create a personal access token following these instructions.
askgit will look for a GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable when executing, to use for authentication.
This is also true if running as a runtime loadable extension.

Rate Limiting

All API requests to GitHub are rate limited.
The following tables make use of the GitHub GraphQL API (v4), which rate limits additionally based on the "complexity" of GraphQL queries.
Generally speaking, the more fields/relations in your GraphQL query, the higher the "cost" of a single API request, and the faster you may reach a rate limit.
Depending on your SQL query, it's hard to know ahead of time what a good client-side rate limit is.
By default, each of the tables below will fetch 100 items per page and permit 2 API requests per second.
You can override both of these parameters by setting the following environment variables:

1. GITHUB_PER_PAGE - expects an integer between 1 and 100, sets how many items are fetched per-page in API calls that paginate results.


2. GITHUB_RATE_LIMIT - expressed in the form (number of requests) / (number of seconds) (i.e. 1/3 means at most 1 request per 3 seconds)

If you encounter a rate limit error that looks like You have exceeded a secondary rate limit, consider setting the GITHUB_PER_PAGE value to a lower number.
If you have a large number of items to scan in your query, it may take longer, but you should avoid hitting a rate limit error.

github_stargazers

Table-valued-function that returns a list of users who have starred a repository.

| Column | Type |
|------------|----------|
| login | TEXT |
| email | TEXT |
| name | TEXT |
| bio | TEXT |
| company | TEXT |
| avatar_url | TEXT |
| created_at | DATETIME |
| updated_at | DATETIME |
| twitter | TEXT |
| website | TEXT |
| location | TEXT |
| starred_at | DATETIME |

Params:
1. fullNameOrOwner - either the full repo name askgitdev/askgit or just the owner askgit (which would require the second argument)
2. name - optional if the first argument is a "full" name, otherwise required - the name of the repo

sql
SELECT * FROM github_stargazers('askgitdev', 'askgit');
SELECT * FROM github_stargazers('askgitdev/askgit'); -- both are equivalent

github_starred_repos

Table-valued-function that returns a list of repositories a user has starred.

| Column | Type |
|-----------------|----------|
| name | TEXT |
| url | TEXT |
| description | TEXT |
| created_at | DATETIME |
| pushed_at | DATETIME |
| updated_at | DATETIME |
| stargazer_count | INT |
| name_with_owner | TEXT |
| starred_at | DATETIME |

Params:
1. login - the login of a GitHub user

sql
SELECT * FROM github_starred_repos('patrickdevivo')

github_stargazer_count

Scalar function that returns the number of stars a GitHub repository has.

Params:
1. fullNameOrOwner - either the full repo name askgitdev/askgit or just the owner askgit (which would require the second argument)
2. name - optional if the first argument is a "full" name, otherwise required - the name of the repo

sql
SELECT github_stargazer_count('askgitdev', 'askgit');
SELECT github_stargazer_count('askgitdev/askgit'); -- both are equivalent

github_user_repos and github_org_repos

Table-valued function that returns all the repositories belonging to a user or an organization.

| Column | Type |
|-----------------------------|----------|
| created_at | DATETIME |
| database_id | INT |
| default_branch_ref_name | TEXT |
| default_branch_ref_prefix | TEXT |
| description | TEXT |
| disk_usage | INT |
| fork_count | INT |
| homepage_url | TEXT |
| is_archived | BOOLEAN |
| is_disabled | BOOLEAN |
| is_fork | BOOLEAN |
| is_mirror | BOOLEAN |
| is_private | BOOLEAN |
| issue_count | INT |
| latest_release_author | TEXT |
| latest_release_created_at | DATETIME |
| latest_release_name | TEXT |
| latest_release_published_at | DATETIME |
| license_key | TEXT |
| license_name | TEXT |
| name | TEXT |
| open_graph_image_url | TEXT |
| primary_language | TEXT |
| pull_request_count | INT |
| pushed_at | DATETIME |
| release_count | INT |
| stargazer_count | INT |
| updated_at | DATETIME |
| watcher_count | INT |

Params:
1. login - the login of a GitHub user or organization

sql
SELECT * FROM github_user_repos('patrickdevivo')
SELECT * FROM github_org_repos('askgitdev')

github_repo_issues

Table-valued-function that returns all the issues of a GitHub repository.

| Column | Type |
|-----------------------|-----------|
| owner | TEXT |
| reponame | TEXT |
| author_login | TEXT |
| body | TEXT |
| closed | BOOLEAN |
| closed_at | DATETIME |
| comment_count | INT |
| created_at | DATETIME |
| created_via_email | BOOLEAN |
| database_id | TEXT |
| editor_login | TEXT |
| includes_created_edit | BOOLEAN |
| label_count | INT |
| last_edited_at | DATETIME |
| locked | BOOLEAN |
| milestone_count | INT |
| number | INT |
| participant_count | INT |
| published_at | DATETIME |
| reaction_count | INT |
| state | TEXT |
| title | TEXT |
| updated_at | DATETIME |
| url | TEXT |

Params:
1. fullNameOrOwner - either the full repo name askgitdev/askgit or just the owner askgit (which would require the second argument)
2. name - optional if the first argument is a "full" name, otherwise required - the name of the repo

sql
SELECT * FROM github_repo_issues('askgitdev/askgit');
SELECT * FROM github_repo_issues('askgitdev', 'askgit'); -- both are equivalent

github_repo_prs

Table-valued-function that returns all the pull requests of a GitHub repository.

| Column | Type |
|--------------------------|----------|
| additions | INT |
| author_login | TEXT |
| author_association | TEXT |
| base_ref_oid | TEXT |
| base_ref_name | TEXT |
| base_repository_name | TEXT |
| body | TEXT |
| changed_files | INT |
| closed | BOOLEAN |
| closed_at | DATETIME |
| comment_count | INT |
| commit_count | INT |
| created_at | TEXT |
| created_via_email | BOOLEAN |
| database_id | INT |
| deletions | INT |
| editor_login | TEXT |
| head_ref_name | TEXT |
| head_ref_oid | TEXT |
| head_repository_name | TEXT |
| is_draft | INT |
| label_count | INT |
| last_edited_at | DATETIME |
| locked | BOOLEAN |
| maintainer_can_modify | BOOLEAN |
| mergeable | TEXT |
| merged | BOOLEAN |
| merged_at | DATETIME |
| merged_by | TEXT |
| number | INT |
| participant_count | INT |
| published_at | DATETIME |
| review_decision | TEXT |
| state | TEXT |
| title | TEXT |
| updated_at | DATETIME |
| url | TEXT |

Params:
1. fullNameOrOwner - either the full repo name askgitdev/askgit or just the owner askgit (which would require the second argument)
2. name - optional if the first argument is a "full" name, otherwise required - the name of the repo

sql
SELECT * FROM github_repo_prs('askgitdev/askgit');
SELECT * FROM github_repo_prs('askgitdev', 'askgit'); -- both are equivalent

github_repo_file_content

Scalar function that returns the contents of a file in a GitHub repository

Params:
1. fullNameOrOwner - either the full repo name askgitdev/askgit or just the owner askgit (which would require the second argument)
2. name - optional if the first argument is a "full" name, otherwise required - the name of the repo
3. expression - either a simple file path (README.md) or a rev-parse suitable expression that includes a path (HEAD:README.md or <some-sha>:README.md)

sql
SELECT github_stargazer_count('askgitdev', 'askgit', 'README.md');
SELECT github_stargazer_count('askgitdev/askgit', 'README.md'); -- both are equivalent

Sourcegraph API (experimental!)

You can use askgit to query the Sourcegraph API.

Authenticating

You must provide an authentication token in order to use the Sourcegraph API tables.
You can create a personal access token following these instructions.
askgit will look for a SOURCEGRAPH_TOKEN environment variable when executing, to use for authentication.
This is also true if running as a runtime loadable extension.

sourcegraph_search

Table-valued-function that returns results from a Sourcegraph search.

| Column | Type |
|----------------------|------|
| __typename | TEXT |
| results | TEXT |

__typename will be one of Repository, CommitSearchResult, or FileMatch.
results will be the JSON value of a search result (will match what's returned from the API)

Params:
1. query - a sourcegraph search query (docs)

sql
SELECT sourcegraph_search('askgit');

NPM Registry

askgit can also query the NPM registry API.

npm_get_package

Scalar function that queries https://registry.npmjs.org/<<packageName>> or https://registry.npmjs.org/<<packageName>>/<<version>> (depending on number of params)
and returns the JSON response.

Params:
1. package - name of the NPM package
2. version - (optional) package version

sql
SELECT npm_get_package('jquery')
SELECT npm_get_package('jquery', 'latest')

Example Queries

This will return all commits in the history of the currently checked out branch/commit of the repo.
sql
SELECT * FROM commits

Return the (de-duplicated) email addresses of commit authors:
sql
SELECT DISTINCT author_email FROM commits

Return the commit counts of every author (by email):
sql
SELECT author_email, count(*) FROM commits GROUP BY author_email ORDER BY count(*) DESC

Same as above, but excluding merge commits:
sql
SELECT author_email, count(*) FROM commits WHERE parents < 2 GROUP BY author_email ORDER BY count(*) DESC

Outputs the set of files in the current tree:
sql
SELECT * FROM files

Returns author emails with lines added/removed, ordered by total number of commits in the history (excluding merges):
sql
SELECT count(DISTINCT commits.hash) AS commits, SUM(additions) AS additions, SUM(deletions) AS deletions, author_email
FROM commits LEFT JOIN stats('', commits.hash)
WHERE commits.parents < 2
GROUP BY author_email ORDER BY commits

Returns commit counts by author, broken out by day of the week:

sql
SELECT
count(*) AS commits,
count(CASE WHEN strftime('%w',author_when)='0' THEN 1 END) AS sunday,
count(CASE WHEN strftime('%w',author_when)='1' THEN 1 END) AS monday,
count(CASE WHEN strftime('%w',author_when)='2' THEN 1 END) AS tuesday,
count(CASE WHEN strftime('%w',author_when)='3' THEN 1 END) AS wednesday,
count(CASE WHEN strftime('%w',author_when)='4' THEN 1 END) AS thursday,
count(CASE WHEN strftime('%w',author_when)='5' THEN 1 END) AS friday,
count(CASE WHEN strftime('%w',author_when)='6' THEN 1 END) AS saturday,
author_email
FROM commits GROUP BY author_email ORDER BY commits

Exporting

You can use the askgit export sub command to save the output of queries into a sqlite database file.
The command expects a path to a db file (which will be created if it doesn't already exist) and a variable number of "export pairs," specified by the -e flag.
Each pair represents the name of a table to create and a query to generate its contents.

askgit export my-export-file -e commits -e "SELECT * FROM commits" -e files -e "SELECT * FROM files"

This can be useful if you're looking to use another tool to examine the data emitted by askgit.
Since the exported file is a plain SQLite database, queries should be much faster (as the original git repository is no longer traversed) and you should be able to use any tool that supports querying SQLite database files.