Introducing para: A package metrics tool

para is short for Packages and Releases Analytics. It’s a simple tool to solve a simple problem for those who release software via Snaps, Brew, GitHub Releases, etc. Metrics and availability.

If you release software via Brew or GitHub Releases, para lets you view metrics from those platforms so you can see how well those packages are doing. Here’s an example of pulling the metrics for the static site generator Gotham:

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Brew data:
The number of installs in the last 30 days is: 4

GitHub data:
v0.6.0:
gotham-v0.6.0-linux-amd64-checksum.txt: 0
gotham-v0.6.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz: 2
gotham-v0.6.0-macos-amd64-checksum.txt: 0
gotham-v0.6.0-macos-amd64.tar.gz: 3
v0.5.0:
gotham-v0.5.0-linux-amd64-checksum.txt: 0
gotham-v0.5.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz: 2
gotham-v0.5.0-macos-amd64-checksum.txt: 0
gotham-v0.5.0-macos-amd64.tar.gz: 0

Don’t have a software project yet? No worries, para is still helpful for you. When you’re still in the naming phase, para check will check if a name is available on Snap, Brew, Chocolatey, and NPM. This way you can easily find a name that’s available without hacking to tack on a username or some other weird suffix to your project’s name.

para is still very much a work-in-progress with only an unpolished v0.1.0 release so far. Snap metrics isn’t yet supported but it’s on the roadmap. It’s written in Go, packed as a raw binary, deb and snap, currently supports Linux and macOS on amd64, and is open source (MIT licensed).

You can learn more and contribute at its GitHub Repository.