Gource – A version control visualization tool | Hacker News Reader

Gource – A version control visualization tool

gource.io

101 pointsthe_wheel19 comments

There are some interesting things that can be done with gource beyond version control. Here's someone using it to visualize OpenBSD pf(4) firewall logs!

http://www.echothrust.com/blogs/monitoring-pf-logs-gource

Even though Gource isn't new, it's fantastic software that people should be aware of!

I wasted the whole day looking at the history of various repos. WARNING, this is addictive...

To install on Mac OX X, run:

    brew install boost glm glew sdl_image
    ./configure
    make

It's even easier than that:

    brew install gource

Or `sudo port install gource`

Anyone one know what type of tree diagrams these are? I'd love to generate a file system directory structure in that style of tree diagram

Force directed graphs. D3js has a solid implementation

Awesome tool and easy to get started. Made a quick vis of a hackathon I did last year. Recorded using this gist (https://gist.github.com/qiaoxueshi/5910150)

https://youtu.be/BLX764QP1oQ

It is very easy to install this on Ubuntu 16.04.

apt-get install gource

Full instructions https://www.devmanuals.net/install/ubuntu/ubuntu-16-04-LTS-X...

For Arch, it's just

    pacman -S gource

I have used it and it is awesome. Check out their Web server log visualizer.

This is not new. I remember trying it 4 years ago.

Any impressions to share? Useful, pretty, neat but ... ?

I used this once to illustrate software development work to non-technical colleagues. It succeeded in showing them how many small changes from many people come together into the final product.

I liked using it as a motivational tool, to remind myself how far a project had gone and how I'd contributed, but that's about it

Pretty neat, not that useful because non-interactive video visualizations rarely are. Also can be used to visualize other things. I've used it to show forum activity for example.

Non-interactive video visualizations were useful for decades before interactive ones became available, and still are when done well (which isn't as rare as you imply). They also reach a much wider audience.

Pretty, neat, attracts crowds for once or twice. Didn't know how to make use of it.

I have used it several times when presenting the stuff we have done at my current job (i.e. show how we have grown from a 2 person startup to a 15 Engineer shop). Undergrads like it a lot.

The only thing that I think it is missing is having a "size" of each node to represent the size of the file. That will give a lot more visibility on changes.

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