Code · BBCS-PHI · UK Public Sector GitHub Observatory

Language figures come from GitHub's own per-repository byte counts, which measure source rather than a single headline label. File counts and repository sizes come from the mirrors themselves. The two tell different stories, and the difference is the point.

The codebase

languages in use

96.2 MB of source

1.4k

files at HEAD

across every analysed repository

0 B

on disk as mirrors

full history, every branch and tag

50.9 MB

largest repository

BSOL_Disability_Mapping

What stands out

One archived repository holds 23% of all the bytes.

BSOL_Disability_Mapping is 50.9 MB of git - a 2013 static snapshot of www.gov.uk, not source code. It single-handedly makes HTML the largest language by volume (91% of all source bytes). Any size or language statistic that does not exclude it is measuring an archive, not a codebase.

Sizes here are GitHub's reported figures.

This organisation was harvested with blobless partial clones, which fetch every commit and file path but not file contents, so there is no local size to measure against. Checked elsewhere in this dataset against 1,526 fully mirrored repositories, GitHub's reported size is accurate to within about six percent.

Ruby is the house language, but its share is falling.

Ruby is the primary language of 0% of archived repositories but only 0% of live ones. Python, Go, TypeScript and HCL have taken the difference - the signature of a shift from monolithic Rails publishing apps toward data pipelines, infrastructure-as-code and platform tooling.

Most repositories are small; a handful are enormous.

58% of repositories are under a megabyte of git data. The estate is not a monolith - it is a very long tail of small services, gems and prototypes around a few large publishing applications.

Languages, two ways

By volume of source

Bytes of code. Dominated by archived static HTML.

By number of repositories

How many repositories name each language as their primary one. A better guide to what engineers actually work in.

Live estate versus archive

The same language ranking, split by whether the repository is still active. The shift is the clearest signal of technical direction in the whole dataset.

Active repositories

Archived repositories

Scale

Repository size distribution

Git data per repository, log-ish buckets.

Commits against files

Each circle is a repository, sized by number of distinct authors. Both axes are logarithmic. The diagonal band is the normal relationship between codebase size and churn; outliers above it are long-lived apps with heavy iteration, below it are dumps and imports.

The shape of a repository

Directory layout is the cheapest reliable signal of what a repository actually is. app/ with config/ and spec/ is a Rails application; src/ with test/ is Java or Node. Counted by how many repositories contain each top-level directory at HEAD.

Most common top-level directories

Most common file extensions

By total file count across the estate.

The twenty largest repositories

Repository	Language	Git size	Commits	Files	Status
BSOL_Disability_Mapping	-	50.9 MB	12	64	active
BSol.mapR	R	34.4 MB	112	49	active
statistics_training	HTML	26.1 MB	34	195	active
ParamedicsFeedback	HTML	25.2 MB	29	63	active
intro_to_git	HTML	20.4 MB	7	17	active
BSOLTheme	HTML	8.9 MB	43	64	active
BSOL_Outcomes_Framework	TSQL	8.7 MB	207	113	active
bbcs-quarto-report	SCSS	7.6 MB	3	7	active
maps_in_leaflet_using_r	-	7.2 MB	4	15	active
BSOLutils	R	6.2 MB	80	81	active
hexmap	HTML	5.3 MB	19	22	active
bbcs_brands	-	4.2 MB	5	7	active
useful_r_code	CSS	4.2 MB	4	160	active
Python-Interactive-Map	Jupyter Notebook	3.9 MB	12	11	active
2_BSOL_Outcomes_Framework	HTML	1.8 MB	123	29	active
CVD_PREVENT_OfficerR_test	R	1.6 MB	15	16	active
elective_waiting_list_modelling	R	1.4 MB	40	39	active
LifeExpectancy	R	1.3 MB	12	13	active
ICS_SHMI	HTML	1.2 MB	4	24	active
OutcomesFramework	-	828.4 kB	2	3	active