CMS code base comparison

№ 265JUL 20, 2007

Contents

§Drupal

A graph showing the growth of Drupal's code, comments, and blank lines from 2000 to 2007. — Source: Drupal statistics at Ohloh.

§Joomla!

A graph showing the growth of Joomla! code, comments, and blank lines from 2000 to 2007. — Source: Joomla! statistics at Ohloh.

§Wordpress

A graph showing the growth of WordPress code, comments, and blank lines from 2000 to 2007. — Source: Wordpress statistics at Ohloh.

§Plone

A stacked area chart showing the growth of Plone's code, comments, and blank lines from 2000 to 2007. — Source: Plone statistics at Ohloh.

(These graphs depict statistics for the core of each project, and do not include contributed modules, extensions or third-party plugins.)

§Conclusions

All projects have been growing in size. No exceptions.
Drupal has, by far, the smallest code base. It's lean and mean. Joomla!'s code base is about 8 times bigger than Drupal's. Even Wordpress's code base is larger than Drupal's.
Of all tools, the WordPress code has the fewest code comments. Drupal and Joomla!, on the other hand, have the best documented code.