git-blame-blame

Find who approved the PR that introduced a buggy line of code.

Description

git-blame-blame goes one step further than git blame. It not only identifies the commit that introduced a line of code, but also finds the pull request associated with that commit and lists everyone who approved it.

Install

npm install -g git-blame-blame

Requirements

• A GitHub personal access token with repo scope
• Set the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable (or use the --token flag)

export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your_token_here

Usage

git-blame-blame <file:line> [options]
git-blame-blame <tracked-path> --bus-factor
git-blame-blame <tracked-path> --export csv

Examples

$ git-blame-blame src/auth.js:42
src/auth.js:42
  Line: "return token === undefined ? guest : user"

  Commit:   abc1234 by alice <[email protected]> (2024-03-15)
  Subject:  fix: handle unauthenticated users

  PR #234:  "fix: handle unauthenticated users"
  URL:      https://github.com/org/repo/pull/234

  Approved: bob, carol

$ git-blame-blame src/auth.js:42 --json
{
  "file": "src/auth.js",
  "line": 42,
  "lineContent": "return token === undefined ? guest : user",
  "commit": {
    "sha": "abc1234...",
    "shortSha": "abc1234",
    "authorName": "alice",
    "authorEmail": "[email protected]",
    "date": "2024-03-15",
    "subject": "fix: handle unauthenticated users"
  },
  "pr": {
    "number": 234,
    "title": "fix: handle unauthenticated users",
    "url": "https://github.com/org/repo/pull/234"
  },
  "approvals": [
    { "login": "bob", "email": null },
    { "login": "carol", "email": null }
  ]
}

$ git-blame-blame src/ --bus-factor
Bus Factor Analysis:

Critical (bus factor = 1):
  src/core/engine.ts      only alice maintains this (847 lines)

At Risk (bus factor = 2):
  src/api/routes.ts       carol 60% + alice 40%

Healthy (bus factor >= 3):
  src/utils/helpers.ts    alice 40%, bob 35%, carol 25%

Overall repo bus factor: 1
Recommendation: alice is the single point of failure for 1 file

$ git-blame-blame src/ --export csv > blame-report.csv
$ git-blame-blame src/ --export json > blame-report.json

Options

| Flag | Description | |------|-------------| | -t, --token <token> | GitHub personal access token (overrides GITHUB_TOKEN) | | -r, --repo <owner/repo> | GitHub repository (auto-detected from git remote if omitted) | | --json | Output results as JSON | | --since <date> | Limit tracked-path analysis to code added or modified since this date | | --team <file> | Show tracked-path contributions grouped by a team roster | | --bus-factor | Show per-file bus factor using contributors with more than 20% of blamed lines | | --export <csv|json> | Export tracked-path blame analysis as structured data | | -V, --version | Show version number | | -h, --help | Show help |

How it works

git-blame-blame runs a 4-step pipeline:

1. git blame — Runs git log -L on the specified file and line to identify the commit that introduced that line of code.
2. Find commit — Looks up the commit SHA in your repository to get author info, date, and commit message.
3. Find PR — Queries the GitHub API to find which pull request contains that commit.
4. Get approvals — Fetches all reviews for that PR and returns the list of approvers.

Development

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/git-blame-blame
cd git-blame-blame
pnpm install

# Run in dev mode
pnpm dev src/auth.js:42

# Build
pnpm build

VS Code Extension

A minimal VS Code extension scaffold lives in vscode/.

See vscode/README.md for setup and usage instructions.

License

MIT