A new metric was introduced to calculate the distance between actively modified files in a source code repository and the files, which are rarely modified and may be considered abandoned or even dead. It was empirically demonstrated that larger repositories have larger values of the introduced metric. The metric may be used for earlier detection of code maintenance anomalies and helping software developers make the decision of splitting the repository into smaller ones in order to prevent maintainability issues.

Yegor Bugayenko is a Lab Director in Huawei RRI, a founder of Zerocracy, which replaces annoying bosses with AI bots; an OOP fundamentalist; an author of “Elegant Objects” book series; a provocative blogger at yegor256.com; a creator of Zold, a non-Blockchain cryptocurrency for fast micro-payments; a hands-on Java and Ruby programmer; a creator of Cactoos, Takes, JCabi, and Rultor; a philanthropist donating four thousand dollars annually to an open source award.