How often does the FreeBSD doc tree go quiet? I looked at every commit to the doc tree over the past ten years and counted the periods of at least 15 minutes with no commits at all. All times are UTC.
The short answer
Between 2016-09-26 12:07 UTC and 2026-09-26 12:07 UTC there were 9,093 gaps of 15 minutes or more between commits to the doc tree, about 2.5 a day. The doc tree is far less busy than src or ports, so a 15-minute quiet spell is the normal state: 99.7% of all clock time fell inside one. The more telling numbers are the long gaps: 2,518 lasted 12 hours or more, and 888 lasted a full day or more.
- 12,059 distinct commit timestamps in the ten-year window
- About 100% of all clock time fell inside one of these 15-minute-plus gaps
- Median gap length: about 4.7 hours
- 7,240 gaps lasted an hour or more; 5,419 lasted three hours or more
Method
- Source: the
mainbranch of thefreebsd-docrepository, following first-parent history so that each commit is counted when it landed onmain(branches are not included). The doc tree moved from Subversion to Git in December 2020; the earlier history comes from the Subversion-to-Git conversion. - Timestamps: committer date, converted to UTC and sorted. For the Subversion era this is the time the commit reached the server. Git does not record push time, so for the Git era committer date is the closest available measure of when a change landed.
- A gap is the time between two consecutive commits, counted when it is 15 minutes or longer.
- Cross-check: using author date instead gives 9,382 gaps, with the same overall pattern.
Time of day
For each UTC hour, the table shows the share of that hour spent inside a gap of 15 minutes or more, how many gaps started in that hour, and how many gaps of one hour or more started in that hour.
| Hour (UTC) | Time spent in a gap | Gaps starting | 1h+ gaps starting |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00–00:59 | 99.8% | 325 | 285 |
| 01:00–01:59 | 99.9% | 202 | 179 |
| 02:00–02:59 | 99.9% | 213 | 183 |
| 03:00–03:59 | 99.9% | 154 | 128 |
| 04:00–04:59 | 99.9% | 160 | 140 |
| 05:00–05:59 | 99.9% | 172 | 138 |
| 06:00–06:59 | 99.9% | 266 | 221 |
| 07:00–07:59 | 99.8% | 257 | 205 |
| 08:00–08:59 | 99.8% | 364 | 295 |
| 09:00–09:59 | 99.7% | 402 | 304 |
| 10:00–10:59 | 99.6% | 407 | 304 |
| 11:00–11:59 | 99.6% | 414 | 325 |
| 12:00–12:59 | 99.7% | 386 | 311 |
| 13:00–13:59 | 99.7% | 423 | 347 |
| 14:00–14:59 | 99.6% | 494 | 386 |
| 15:00–15:59 | 99.5% | 562 | 455 |
| 16:00–16:59 | 99.5% | 546 | 423 |
| 17:00–17:59 | 99.4% | 597 | 451 |
| 18:00–18:59 | 99.3% | 651 | 481 |
| 19:00–19:59 | 99.5% | 604 | 460 |
| 20:00–20:59 | 99.6% | 547 | 421 |
| 21:00–21:59 | 99.8% | 400 | 333 |
| 22:00–22:59 | 99.8% | 283 | 244 |
| 23:00–23:59 | 99.8% | 264 | 221 |
Because the doc tree is quiet almost all the time, every hour is more than 99% quiet. The busiest hours are 15:00–19:59 UTC; the quietest are 02:00–05:59 UTC. The “gaps starting” columns show the daily rhythm most clearly: about four times as many gaps start at 17:00–18:59 UTC as at 03:00–05:59 UTC.
Year by year
Gaps are counted in the year they started. 2016 and 2026 are partial years.
| Year | Commits | Gaps (15 min+) | Gaps (1h+) | Time spent in a gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 (from Sep 26) | 345 | 252 | 190 | 99.7% |
| 2017 | 1,537 | 1,107 | 879 | 99.7% |
| 2018 | 1,377 | 995 | 791 | 100.0% |
| 2019 | 959 | 751 | 605 | 99.3% |
| 2020 | 1,065 | 863 | 701 | 99.8% |
| 2021 | 1,377 | 1,037 | 806 | 99.6% |
| 2022 | 1,102 | 869 | 711 | 99.8% |
| 2023 | 1,273 | 971 | 745 | 99.6% |
| 2024 | 805 | 626 | 532 | 99.9% |
| 2025 | 1,134 | 816 | 647 | 99.9% |
| 2026 (to Sep 26) | 1,085 | 806 | 633 | 99.3% |
Commit volume on the doc tree has varied between roughly 800 and 1,550 commits a year, and the number of gaps follows it closely.
How long the gaps are
| Gap length | Number of gaps |
|---|---|
| 15–59 minutes | 1,853 |
| 1–2 hours | 1,061 |
| 2–3 hours | 760 |
| 3–4 hours | 553 |
| 4–5 hours | 441 |
| 5–6 hours | 404 |
| 6–7 hours | 324 |
| 7–8 hours | 299 |
| 8–9 hours | 242 |
| 9–10 hours | 212 |
| 10–11 hours | 210 |
| 11–12 hours | 216 |
| 12–24 hours | 1,630 |
| 24 hours or more | 888 |
The longest gaps
The longest gaps in the doc tree are about a week long: the longest ran from Wednesday 2023-06-07 20:37 to 2023-06-14 19:37 UTC, about 167 hours. Unlike the ports and src trees, there is no single stand-out gap for the move from Subversion to Git.
| Last commit before (UTC) | Next commit (UTC) | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Wed 2023-06-07 20:37 | 2023-06-14 19:37 | 167.0 |
| Wed 2024-03-06 10:49 | 2024-03-13 00:03 | 157.2 |
| Sun 2024-12-22 11:52 | 2024-12-28 21:18 | 153.4 |
| Tue 2024-12-10 18:55 | 2024-12-16 18:06 | 143.2 |
| Tue 2019-04-02 11:21 | 2019-04-08 06:42 | 139.4 |
| Tue 2019-08-13 18:09 | 2019-08-19 10:01 | 135.9 |
| Thu 2018-01-18 14:30 | 2018-01-23 19:05 | 124.6 |
| Wed 2025-03-12 19:25 | 2025-03-17 21:08 | 121.7 |
| Tue 2023-05-30 20:46 | 2023-06-04 19:10 | 118.4 |
| Sun 2022-09-11 15:32 | 2022-09-16 10:29 | 114.9 |
