Obtaining a numeric value for "number of users" or downloads for grant applications and stuff

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Hello there,

Let’s say I have developed some packages which I can collect in a vector of UUIDS:

packages = [
    "634d3b9d-ee7a-5ddf-bec9-22491ea816e1",
    "61744808-ddfa-5f27-97ff-6e42cc95d634",
]

What I’d like to do is get an accurate estimate of just how many users these packages have. I guess the most logical thing is how many times pkg> add was done on these packages.

For someone in their early career stages, like myself, including such information in a grant application can be paramount. Github stars is something I could measure, but it doesn’t actually say much about how many people use the packages, and only allow for speculations…

So, is there a way to get an accurate answer?

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The keyword to look for is “Telemetry”, either here on discourse or on the Pkg.jl repo. Be warned, it’s a somewhat controversial topic.

The TL;DR is (and I hope it’s correct) - there were plans, there is some very limited telemetry, it’s complicated. The page to check for what you may need is snip though I’m unsure whether that particular page is still up to date, since if I recall correctly, telemetry wasn’t merged after all…

EDIT: I’ve removed the link, since it’s out of date.

There’s also this post about the very limited data that is available, so that’s an avenue to investigate as well.

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