---

title: “RefDiff” description: > RefDiff Plugin

Summary

For development workload analysis, we often need to know how many commits have been created between 2 releases. This plugin calculates which commits differ between 2 Ref (branch/tag), and the result will be stored back into database for further analysis.

Important Note

You need to run gitextractor before the refdiff plugin. The gitextractor plugin should create records in the refs table in your DB before this plugin can be run.

Configuration

This is a enrichment plugin based on Domain Layer data, no configuration needed

How to use

In order to trigger the enrichment, you need to insert a new task into your pipeline.

1. Make sure commits and refs are collected into your database, refs table should contain records like following:

id                                            ref_type
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/0.3.5   TAG
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/0.3.6   TAG
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/0.5.0   TAG
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/v0.0.1  TAG
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/v0.2.0  TAG
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/v0.3.0  TAG
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/v0.4.0  TAG
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/v0.6.0  TAG
github:GithubRepo:384111310:refs/tags/v0.6.1  TAG

2. If you want to run calculateIssuesDiff, please configure GITHUB_PR_BODY_CLOSE_PATTERN in .env, you can check the example in .env.example(we have a default value, please make sure your pattern is disclosed by single quotes '')
3. If you want to run calculatePrCherryPick, please configure GITHUB_PR_TITLE_PATTERN in .env, you can check the example in .env.example(we have a default value, please make sure your pattern is disclosed by single quotes '')
4. And then, trigger a pipeline like following, you can also define sub tasks, calculateRefDiff will calculate commits between two ref, and creatRefBugStats will create a table to show bug list between two ref:

curl -v -XPOST http://localhost:8080/pipelines --data @- <<'JSON'
{
    "name": "test-refdiff",
    "tasks": [
        [
            {
                "plugin": "refdiff",
                "options": {
                    "repoId": "github:GithubRepo:384111310",
                    "pairs": [
                       { "newRef": "refs/tags/v0.6.0", "oldRef": "refs/tags/0.5.0" },
                       { "newRef": "refs/tags/0.5.0", "oldRef": "refs/tags/0.4.0" }
                    ],
                    "tasks": [
                        "calculateCommitsDiff",
                        "calculateIssuesDiff",
                        "calculatePrCherryPick",
                    ]
                }
            }
        ]
    ]
}
JSON

Or if you prefered calculating latest releases

curl -v -XPOST http://localhost:8080/pipelines --data @- <<'JSON'
{
    "name": "test-refdiff",
    "tasks": [
        [
            {
                "plugin": "refdiff",
                "options": {
                    "repoId": "github:GithubRepo:384111310",
                    "tagsPattern": "v\d+\.\d+.\d+",
                    "tagsLimit": 10,
                    "tagsOrder": "reverse semver",
                    "tasks": [
                        "calculateCommitsDiff",
                        "calculateIssuesDiff",
                        "calculatePrCherryPick",
                    ]
                }
            }
        ]
    ]
}
JSON

Development

This plugin depends on libgit2, you need to install version 1.3.0 in order to run and debug this plugin on your local machine.

Ubuntu

apt install cmake
git clone https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2.git
cd libgit2
git checkout v1.3.0
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
make install

MacOS

NOTE：Do NOT install libgit2 via MadPorts or homebrew, install from source instead.

brew install cmake
git clone https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2.git
cd libgit2
git checkout v1.3.0
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
make install

Troubleshooting (MacOS)

Q: I got an error saying: pkg-config: exec: "pkg-config": executable file not found in $PATH

A:

1. Make sure you have pkg-config installed:

brew install pkg-config

2. Make sure your pkg config path covers the installation: export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/usr/local/lib:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig