Longitudinal study of package registries per https://deps.dev/_/stats

get_package_stats.py compute the total number of dependents

....
Version 2.9.0: 885 dependents
Version 2.9.1: 1170 dependents
Version 3.0.0-alpha1: 79 dependents
Version 3.0.0-beta1: 32 dependents
Version 3.0.0-beta2: 188 dependents
Total unique dependents for org.apache.logging.log4j:log4j-api: 15378

go over each past commit and copy version of stats.json at that commit in directory history

Create line charts for number of dependencies over time

Something happened in NPM counting

Max derivative is Cargo

The deps.dev package counts index only packages that appear in at least one resolved dependency graph. Cross-referencing with PyPI's full upload metadata (BigQuery bigquery-public-data.pypi.distribution_metadata) reveals a substantial visibility gap. In June 2025 deps.dev reported approximately 613,000 PyPI packages, growing to ~778,000 by May 2026 (+27%). The absolute monthly new-package rate from BigQuery (~12,000–25,000/month over the same window) is roughly four times higher than the monthly increments visible in deps.dev (~3,000–22,000/month). Package-count metrics derived from dependency-graph indexes substantially underestimate the true rate of package creation on PyPI.