Analyze Monorepos & Multi-Repo Projects

Your product lives in several git repositories — frontend, backend, infrastructure, a handful of microservices. You need a unified view of team productivity without bouncing between tools.

The Problem

CLI tools like git-fame, gitinspector, and git-quick-stats operate on a single repository at a time. If your team ships a feature spanning three repos, you can't see the combined picture — you run the tool three times and merge the results manually in a spreadsheet.

That breaks down for:

  • Monorepos with submodules — each submodule has its own git history, but the team works across them together
  • Microservices — a feature often touches 3–5 services, each in its own repo
  • Frontend + backend splits — same team, different repos, and you need to report on them as one unit

You want one tool that treats this as a single analysis target — with the ability to drill into any individual repo when needed.

The Workflow

1 Add Your Repositories

Open the Settings tab in Git Insight. In the Additional Repositories section, add each related repository by absolute path (/Users/you/code/backend) or path relative to your current project root (../backend).

Git Insight validates each path and checks for a .git directory. Once saved, a Repositories button appears in the toolbar of Project Statistics and Developer Statistics. For full details on the selector and per-repo behavior, see Multi-Repository Support.

2 View Aggregated Statistics

In Developer Statistics, click the Repositories button and choose All. Git Insight scans every repo in parallel and merges the results — one table of developers with lines added/deleted combined across all repos.

On the Facts tab, velocity metrics (Lines changed per workday, Average per developer per workday) are calculated across the full scope. This gives you an honest unified picture of team output.

3 Drill Into a Single Repo

To investigate a specific service, click Repositories again and uncheck everything except that one repo. Statistics recompute instantly from cache — no re-reading git log. This lets you answer questions like "how much does our billing service change quarter over quarter?" without losing context.

4 Configure Per-Repo Exclusions

Exclusion patterns are per-repository. Your backend probably has generated gRPC stubs or ORM migrations that you want to exclude; your frontend probably has bundler artifacts. Configure each repo's patterns independently so noise in one service doesn't inflate stats in another.

Right-click on files in Extension Details or Commit Details to add exclusion patterns scoped to the selected repo.

5 Merge Developers Across Repos

Developers often use different git identities in different repos (e.g. personal email in open-source contrib, work email in internal services). Merge them in Merge Developers — the merge applies across all selected repositories automatically.

Bidirectional cross-project sync means if someone else on the team opens project B which includes the same repo, they see the merges you configured in project A — no duplicate work.

6 Commit the Configuration

Your .idea/gitInsight.xml now contains the list of additional repositories, per-repo exclusions, and developer merges. Commit it to your main repository so every teammate gets the same multi-repo setup when they clone — zero manual configuration for them.

What Multi-Repo Analysis Reveals

  • Where the work really happens — when you see aggregated statistics, you often discover one service absorbs more effort than expected
  • Cross-service contributors — developers who touch multiple repos are doing integration work that's invisible in single-repo analysis
  • Neglected services — low activity over a quarter may indicate a service that's been forgotten (or that it's simply stable — the Changes tab per repo helps distinguish)
  • True team velocity — splitting a feature across three repos understates velocity in single-repo reports

See Your Whole Product at Once

Install the free trial, add your related repositories in Settings, and get a unified view in minutes.

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