Did you ever wonder, which packages you installed when, who long they are kept on your system, or which package gets the most frequent updates? If you are using Arch Linux you can use the information of /var/cache/pacman.log to generate some nice images to answer these questions.
A notebook containing annotated visualizations for my personal data can be found at paclog.ipynb. If you want to use this to visualize your own pacman.log, there are a few more scripts you can execute:
pacman_parse.py- Reads the file
data/pacman.logand writesdata/pacman_history.csv, which contains the package install/uninstall/update events in a easier to work with format. pacman_visualize.py- This script generates a number of svg files stored in
visualizations/, based on the data in thepacman_history.csv pacman_timeline.py- Create the timeline visualization. Separate script, as it is a bit more complicated.
The results can be viewed in visualizations/. The base data there is the pacman.log from my personal L460, where I installed Arch Linux on 03/12/2016 and it’s running ever since, without reinstallation.