GitHub in Numbers for Bioinformaticians

Impact of Github in Numbers:






Total Number of Bioinformatics repositories in Github:

Figure 2: Number of Bioinformatics Repositories created by Years (source Github).

Total Number of Bioinformatics Projects by Programming Language:

Figure 3: Number of GitHub repositories created in Years by Language (source GitHub)  

Number of Forks by Language:

Figure 4: Distribution of Number of Forks of Bioinformatics Repositories by Language (source GitHub)

Some of the most popular repositories by Forks:

Repo	Language	Forks	Watchers	Created
bigdatagenomics/adam	Scala	154	399	2013
chapmanb/bcbb	Python	146	298	2008
igvteam/igv	Java	81	167	2012
bionode/bionode	JavaScript	23	161	2014
tumblr/genesis	Ruby	15	133	2014
griffithlab/rnaseq_tutorial	R	69	116	2014

Number of Open Issues by Programming Language:

Figure 5: Distribution of Number of Open Issues of Bioinformatics Repositories by Language (source GitHub)

Number of references of GitHub.com in PubMed Central:

Figure 6: Number of Bioinformatics GitHub mentions in PubMed Central Repositories created by Years (source PubMed Central).

Methods

All numbers where generated with the current R script (replace token with Github API token): 

library(devtools)
library(RCurl)
library(RJSONIO)
library(ggplot2)
library(ttutils)
ghSearchRepo <- function(user = NULL, language = "R", only.fullname = TRUE, queryString = NULL, pageSizeNumber = 100){
    if(!is.null(user)){
       user <- paste0("+user:", user)
    }
    if(!is.null(language)){
      language <- paste0("+language:", language)
    }
    if(!is.null(queryString)){
      query <- paste0(queryString)
    }
    pageSize <- paste0("&per_page=", pageSizeNumber)
    search <- paste0("https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=",
               query,
               user,
               language,
               pageSize,
               "&access_token=token")
      response <- getURL(search, ssl.verifypeer = FALSE, useragent = "RCurl")
      output <- fromJSON(response)
      if(output[["total_count"]] == 0){
         return(NULL)
      }
      items <- output$items;
      if(output[["total_count"]] > pageSizeNumber){
            numPage = (as.numeric(output[["total_count"]])/as.numeric(pageSizeNumber))+1 
            for(i in 1:numPage){
            page <- paste0("&page=", i)
            search <- paste0("https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=",
                   query,
                   user,
                   language,
                   pageSize,
                   page,
                   "&access_token=token")
            response <- getURL(search, ssl.verifypeer = FALSE, useragent = "RCurl")
            currentItems <- fromJSON(response)
            if(!is.null(currentItems)){
                  items <- append(items, currentItems$items)
            }
       }
  }
 items
}

addToDF <- function(df, repoList){
      length(repoList)
      for(i in 1:length(repoList)){
              print(repoList[[i]]$full_name)
              repository <- ifelse(is.null(repoList[[i]]$full_name),"Unknown", repoList[[i]]$full_name)
              language <- ifelse(is.null(repoList[[i]]$language),"Unknown", repoList[[i]]$language)
              forks_count <- ifelse(is.null(repoList[[i]]$forks_count),0, repoList[[i]]$forks_count)
              watchers_count <- ifelse(is.null(repoList[[i]]$watchers_count),0, repoList[[i]]$watchers_count)
              created_at <- ifelse(is.null(repoList[[i]]$created_at),"Unknown", substr(repoList[[i]]$created_at, 
                            0,4))
              private <- ifelse(is.null(repoList[[i]]$private),"Unknown", repoList[[i]]$private)
              df <- rbind(df, data.frame("repository" = repository, "language" = language, "forks_count" 
                    = forks_count, "watchers_count" = watchers_count, "created" = created_at, "private" = private))
       }
     df
}

languageKeywords <- function(df, keyword){
       javaRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "Java")
       df <- addToDF(df, javaRepos)
       rRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "R")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = rRepos)
       pRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "Python")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = pRepos)
       cplusRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "C++")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = cplusRepos)
       sRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "Scala")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = sRepos)
       jsRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "JavaScript")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = jsRepos)
       prRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "Perl")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = prRepos)
       shelRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "Shell")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = shelRepos)
       rubyRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "Ruby")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = rubyRepos)
       cRepos = ghSearchRepo(only.fullname = FALSE, queryString = keyword, language = "C")
       df <- addToDF(df, repoList = cRepos)
    df
 }

df <- data.frame("repository" = character(), "language" = character(), "forks_count" = numeric(), 
      "watchers_count" = numeric(), "created" = character(),"private"= character())


df <- languageKeywords(df, "bioinformatics")
df <- languageKeywords(df, "genomics")
df <- languageKeywords(df, "proteomics")
df <- languageKeywords(df, "proteins")
df <- languageKeywords(df, "genes")
df <- languageKeywords(df, "spectrometry")
df <- languageKeywords(df, "biology")
df <- unique(df)
df <- subset(df, repository != "Unknown")

Code for pubMed Central by Stephen Eglen:

require(devtools)
install_github("njahn82/rebi")

require(rebi)


counts = function(year) {
  query = sprintf("github.com AND PUB_YEAR:%d", year)
  print(query)
  my_data <- epmc_search(query = query)
  my_data$hit_count
}

years = 2009:2015
hits = sapply(years, counts)

png(file="github-usage.png")
plot(years, hits, log='', pch=19, bty='n',
     xlab='year of publication',
     ylim=c(0, 2000),
     las=1, main='github.com references on Pubmed Central')
dev.off()