pepper - manpage

Name

pepper — Repository statistics and report tool

Synopsis

pepper [options] report [report options] [repository]

DESCRIPTION

pepper is a command-line tool for retrieving statistics and generating reports from source code repositories. If invoked with valid options,it runs a lua(1) script given by report on the given repository, producing textual or graphical output.

If the report argument doesn’t point to a lua(1) report script, a number of paths will be searched for a report with the given name (see ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES). Thus, the built-in reports can be launched by specifying their name only. Report-specific options can be passed as report options following the report script name. To retrieve a listing of options supported by the respective report, pass --help as described in OPTIONS.

If no repository argument is present, the current directory will be used. Normally, the type of the repository is automatically detected, and an appropriate backend implementation will be selected. Some backends provide additional options, e.g. user authentication for remote repositories. Those options will be listed if you pass the --help flag as described in OPTIONS.

OPTIONS

-?, -h, --help: Print a nice help screen. If the command line includes a report script name or path, report options will be shown. Additionally, backend options will be shown for the selected repository or backend.
-q , --quiet: Set verbosity level to minimum. Only warnings and errors will be shown.
-v , --verbose: Increase verbosity level. Can be specified multiple times.
--no-cache: Neither read from nor write to the local revision cache.
--list-reports: List all reports that can be found in the current report search directories.
--list-backends: List all built-in repository backends.
-bARG, --backend=ARG: Force usage of backend named ARG. Use --list-backends to retrieve a list of all available backends.

REVISION CACHE

pepper uses a local revision cache, located at $HOME/.pepper/cache. It contains meta-data and diffstats of revisions that have been requested in previous invocations of the program.

If the program complains that your revision cache is invalid (probably because of abnormal program termination or power failure), please run the check_cache report to fix it and remove faulty revisions.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

PEPPER_REPORTS: A colon-separated list of paths used to search for report scripts.
PEPPER_CACHEDIR: A path that overrides the default cache location.

EXAMPLES

Let’s assume that the current directory is the repository of interest.

pepper --list-reports: This lists all reports in the current search path with their descriptions. The names from this listing can be used as the program’s report argument.
pepper loc: A classic "Lines of Code" graph will be generated, with the actual plotting done by gnuplot(1). If the user is running X11, a detached window containing the plot will be shown. Else, output in SVG format will be written to stdout. All meta-data and diffstats fetched during this session will be written to the revision cache.
pepper loc --type=png --output=loc.png: The same as above, now probably significantly faster because the revisions of interest are already cached. This time, a PNG image will be generated and written to "loc.png".
pepper authors -n4 --tags="2.6.[0-9]*$": This time, the code contribution by the 4 busiest authors will be be plotted. Additionally, vertical tag marks will be show for all tags that look like releases (of the Linux kernel).
pepper --username=user commit_counts --period=14d http://svn.example.org: This generates a histogram of commit frequencies for the last 14 days. This time, a remote Subversion repository requiring authentication is being used. If a password is required, the program will prompt for it.
pepper shortlog --branch=stable --summary: This will print a simple commit summary from the "stable" branch to stdout, looking like git-shortlog(1).

CUSTOM REPORTS

pepper provides an API for writing custom report scripts in lua(1). The pepper homepage at http://scm-pepper.sourceforge.net contains more information about this topic, including a scripting tutorial covering common tasks and an API reference manual.

EXIT STATUS

0 on success, 1 on failure. Any error messages, warnings and progress will be printed to stderr.