A Curated List of Open-source Software-only Energy Efficiency Measurement Tools: A GitHub Mining Study

TL;DR

This study systematically analyzes open-source energy measurement tools on GitHub, revealing their evolution from CPU-centric utilities to diverse, multi-level, emission-aware tools, aiding energy-efficient software design.

Contribution

It provides the first structured overview of open-source energy and emission measurement tools using Mining Software Repositories methods.

Findings

Shift from CPU-centric to multi-level measurement tools

Increase in tools supporting emission estimation

Identification of key design aspects of energy monitoring tools

Abstract

Energy efficiency has become a growing concern in software development, leading to the need for tools designed to measure energy consumption. While several energy measurement tools are available as open-source projects, their characteristics and adoption remain underexplored. This work presents an empirical study based on a Mining Software Repositories (MSR) approach to identify, classify, and analyze software energy monitoring tools publicly available on GitHub. We qualitatively analyzed an initial dataset of 585 repositories to identify key design aspects, including measurement granularity and underlying design principles. After this analysis, we retained 24 repositories as relevant energy measuring software tools. The qualitative analysis we conduct reveals a clear evolution from early CPU-centric and machine-level monitoring utilities toward more diverse tools that support multi-level granularity (process, container, and AI workload levels) and integrate emission estimation capabilities. This study provides the first structured overview of open-source energy and emission measurement tools from an MSR perspective, which may be beneficial for software architects when designing energy-aware software.