Show authors when viewing a file

Problem to solve

When viewing a file (example) it would be great to see:

  • Code owners for this file
  • Contributors that have worked on this file

This could answer questions like:

  • Who could I ask for a review?
  • Who could I ask for help when working on this file?
  • How "busy" is this file?

Intended users

Mostly developers / creators (for non-code content)

Further details

Proposal

  • Owners can be resolved through the CODEOWNERS file
  • Contributors are a bit more tricky:
    • Use the git blame output for the current revision?
    • Get all users who ever touched the file?
    • Limit the list to some amount of time?

It would be great if this was always shown directly at the top of the page, but since it will be costly to get this information we could hide it behind a toggle button.

Or maybe we could introduce a sidebar like on issues/MRs and render the users similarly to the participants there:

image

Permissions and Security

Documentation

Testing

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

Links / references

Edited by James Ramsay (ex-GitLab)