borgbackup/borg

analyze: add --json output

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#9,992 opened on Aug 1, 2026

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easygood first issue

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Description

borg analyze currently only produces human-readable text output:

  • the set-dedup stats (set / exclusive / rest sizes, see #5741),
  • the hot-spot report (directory path -> churn),
  • the --by-name repository decomposition table (per-name archives / source / stored / compression, shared, unreferenced).

All other status-type commands (info, repo-info, repo-list, list, diff, prune) already offer --json or --json-lines, so tooling can consume their output without scraping text. analyze is the odd one out, and its output is exactly the kind of data monitoring/agent tooling wants (e.g. a read-only MCP status server, see #9955).

Proposal: add --json to borg analyze, emitting the same numbers the text report is rendered from (raw byte values, not pre-formatted sizes), for both the default mode and --by-name.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Inspect how `borg analyze` currently generates its text output and where command line arguments are parsed. Find the appropriate place to add a ` json` flag, and export the raw numeric values as JSON. Use existing ` json` implementations in other borg commands (e.g., `borg info`) as a reference.
Tech stack
python
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
GitPython
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
75