Take the 2016 Git User’s Survey

The 2016 edition of the Git User’s Survey is open and there is a little more than a week remaining before it closes on October 20. Jakub Narębski, one of the main contributors to the gitweb subsystem and author of Mastering Git, posted the survey on behalf of the Git development community. Narębski has created and analyzed the Git User’s Surveys dating back to 2007, but it has been four years since the last one was announced.

The 2016 survey aims to identify who is using Git, how they are using it, and what could be improved. This edition introduces some new questions on topics such as gender and occupation, to gauge the diversity of the Git community. Narębski said he was inspired by the Stack Overflow Developer Survey when creating the question on occupation. He wanted to determine if different occupations lead to different ways of using Git and if there are some that are not well served by Git.

Narębski repeats questions from previous years to determine users’ favorite tools, how they publish/propagate their changes, and what Git versions and operating systems they are using. He said he is particularly interested in hearing from users of Git on Windows regarding the features they use and their particular “pain points.”

Results of the survey will be published to the Git Wiki and will include both the raw data and Narębski’s analysis. In 2012 the survey received more than 6,000 responses. At that time, 54% of respondents used Git for open source development (also public domain, and published and unlicensed). As open source software has rapidly become more mainstream and commonly used at large enterprises, responses to the 2016 Git user’s survey may reveal some dramatic changes when comparing results from 2012.

Git is one of the most important tools for supporting the world’s digital infrastructure and it is the lifeblood of many open source projects. If you want to help the Git development community gain a better understanding of your needs, take a few minutes to fill out this 50-question survey. All of the question are optional and those who have cookies enabled can submit it as partially complete and return to submit the remaining answers at a later time.