Codebase Inspection

Analyze repositories for lines of code, language breakdown, file counts, and code-vs-comment ratios using pygount.

When to Use

• User asks for LOC (lines of code) count
• User wants a language breakdown of a repo
• User asks about codebase size or composition
• User wants code-vs-comment ratios
• General "how big is this repo" questions

Prerequisites

pip install pygount

1. Basic Summary (Most Common)

cd /path/to/repo
pygount --format=summary \
  --folders-to-skip=".git,node_modules,venv,.venv,__pycache__,.cache,dist,build,.next,.tox,.eggs,*.egg-info" \
  .

IMPORTANT: Always use --folders-to-skip to exclude dependency/build directories, otherwise pygount will crawl them and take a very long time.

2. Common Folder Exclusions

# Python project
--folders-to-skip=".git,__pycache__,venv,.venv,.tox,.eggs,*.egg-info,.pytest_cache,.mypy_cache,.ruff_cache"

# Node.js project
--folders-to-skip=".git,node_modules,dist,build,.next,.cache,coverage"

# General (safe default)
--folders-to-skip=".git,node_modules,venv,.venv,__pycache__,.cache,dist,build,.tox,.eggs,*.egg-info,.pytest_cache,.mypy_cache"

3. Detailed Per-File Output

pygount --format=summary \
  --folders-to-skip=".git,node_modules,.venv,__pycache__" \
  --names-to-skip="*.pyc,*.pyo,*.so,*.dylib" \
  /path/to/repo

4. Language Breakdown Only

pygount --format=summary /path/to/repo 2>/dev/null | grep -E "^\s+\w" | sort -t$'\t' -k2 -rn

5. JSON Output (for further processing)

pygount --format=json \
  --folders-to-skip=".git,node_modules,.venv,__pycache__" \
  /path/to/repo > codebase_stats.json

python3 -c "
import json
with open('codebase_stats.json') as f:
    data = json.load(f)
# Aggregate by language
from collections import defaultdict
by_lang = defaultdict(lambda: {'code': 0, 'files': 0})
for entry in data:
    lang = entry.get('language', 'unknown')
    by_lang[lang]['code'] += entry.get('code', 0)
    by_lang[lang]['files'] += 1
for lang, stats in sorted(by_lang.items(), key=lambda x: -x[1]['code']):
    print(f'{lang:20s} {stats[\"code\"]:8d} lines  {stats[\"files\"]:4d} files')
"

6. Quick LOC Count (without pygount)

If pygount isn't available, use find + wc:

# Count lines in all Python files (excluding venvs)
find . -name "*.py" -not -path "*/venv/*" -not -path "*/.venv/*" -not -path "*/__pycache__/*" | xargs wc -l | tail -1

# Count by language
echo "Python: $(find . -name '*.py' -not -path '*/.venv/*' | xargs wc -l 2>/dev/null | tail -1)"
echo "JavaScript: $(find . -name '*.js' -not -path '*/node_modules/*' | xargs wc -l 2>/dev/null | tail -1)"
echo "TypeScript: $(find . -name '*.ts' -not -path '*/node_modules/*' | xargs wc -l 2>/dev/null | tail -1)"

7. File Count by Type

# Count files by extension
find . -type f -not -path "*/.git/*" -not -path "*/node_modules/*" -not -path "*/.venv/*" | \
  sed 's/.*\.//' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Pitfalls

• Always exclude dependency dirs: node_modules, venv, .venv, __pycache__, dist, build — otherwise pygount hangs or counts millions of irrelevant lines.
• Binary files: pygount skips them, but find + wc doesn't. Use --names-to-skip for pygount, or filter with grep -I for find.
• Generated files: *.min.js, *_pb2.py, auto-generated code inflates counts. Exclude with --names-to-skip.
• Encoding: pygount may fail on non-UTF-8 files. Use --encoding=utf-8 or --encoding=chardet for mixed-encoding repos.