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Add documentation on download counts #8296

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Nov 18, 2024
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Add documentation on download counts #8296

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Add documentation on download counts
szakarias Nov 18, 2024
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szakarias Nov 18, 2024
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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions doc/help-scoring.md
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Expand Up @@ -30,6 +30,14 @@ option.

Pub.dev tracks and stores how many times each version of each package gets downloaded. This is used to display package usage metrics.

The displayed download counts on pub.dev are aggregates based on raw server-side numbers counting the times a package archive has been downloaded.

The download count is not a measure of how many users a package has. A package can have a high usage with low download counts because users may cache the package in their `PUB_CACHE`, which is a global cache. Hence, a particular package version will only be downloaded once per user, even if the user calls `pub get` many times across different projects.

On the other hand, for some packages the download count may be relatively high. For instance, the number can be high if the package is used as a dependency by other popular packages. The download counts can also be highly affected if the package is used by CI systems running tests, since these systems typically don't retain the `PUB_CACHE` between test runs.

The download count is by no means a perfect metric, and should only be regarded as an indicator of popularity.

## Popularity

Popularity measures the number of apps that depend on a package over the past 60
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