Commits.io – Create a poster from your code | Hacker News Reader

Commits.io – Create a poster from your code

commits.io

175 pointsrobgering61 comments

We will be adding private repo support soon, it's just the mechanics are very clunky (ssh keys and such). You could however generate a temporary token (until you have purchased the poster, at which time you can delete it). You can enter the repo address on the home page as such: https://<auth-code>:x-oauth-basic@github.com/user/repo.git

Just to hijack my own thread. The servers should be back up and snappy.

Doesn't doing it this way mean that there will be a publicly accessible URL containing your code? This would be a good caveat to mention.

Nice idea but not sure about the execution, the generated poster looks just like minified code. Something is missing...

Really like the idea and just had this thought: why not just present the code in color, normally indented (so not like minified) and in your favorite theme (such as Solarized Dark) in a long portrait format poster, then put some glossy finish on it and I'd buy instantly.

My initial reaction was "oh is that all". I mean don't get me wrong, the way the site works is nice, but I was really expecting it to move the code around such that the whitespace formed a picture, or have all the lines of code in random text sizes, or allow you to prioritise different sections so that some were highlighted or something like that.

As it stands it's not really something I want on my wall.

This reminds me of Litographs, a company that puts full text of books in poster form. While the concept works fine for prose it doesn't translate well for code.

Same. I was expecting something more like Perl's good old "Acme::EyeDrops", which obfuscates your code, then pours it into an arbitrary ASCII art shape. That's a lot more work than just removing whitespace and using characters as pixels, but this guy is charging money after all.

Not commits guy, just playing around with it. Customize it and add a logo

Not sure if this is public or not but for example Wordpress git repo with their logo

https://commits.io/builds/115b510aca7

http://i.imgur.com/OzzW4ZV.png [Just in case it's not accessible, screenshot fully zoomed out]

http://i.imgur.com/Zi37xZF.png [Zoomed in on the whiter parts of the logo]

Pretty cool! Was wondering how it would transform a whitespace sensitive language like Python. The service seems to be slow. But it looks like it would strip out all the indentation leaving it rather meaningless.

This is great.

I recently shut down two small firms that I've run for years and years - the opportunity cost of not doing contract work or something else that paid decently was too much to keep at it.

...but I loved the code base, as clunky as it was. It had warts, scars, and stretch marks that documented its path through the years. I don't miss running the firms, but I do miss the code.

I'll be buying posters to hang on the wall and remind me of the good times.

Thanks! It was a fun and rewarding moment when it generated a poster from its own code this morning.

Very cool! Does this use Lob[0] for posters (the size selections line up)? I've been wondering about their quality for a few side projects and am interested in any feedback about their quality.

[0] https://lob.com/services/sps/posters/pricing

I managed to get something for syncany https://github.com/syncany/syncany: https://commits-io.s3.amazonaws.com/71712d74724.pdf

THIS. IS. AWESOME.

Looks nice but seems to crash upon clicking the "Do Magic" button. I'm guessing it might be getting stressed by the traffic from HN.

Took me about 4 tries before anything went through.

Same here, though now the site is not loading anymore at all.

Server is getting a lot of hits unfortunately. And generations take a lot of resources. Sorry :(

Makes sense, you should keep some high resolution pictures on the front page as examples (ones you could zoom in on to see what they really look like). That way people can get an idea of what these look like without unduly stressing the servers.

Other than that, looks great. Well done.

get a static landing page on S3 or CloudFiles , could have at least seen the landing page .

So I thought I'd try this again today, what format images do you take? it doesn't say anything obvious and the png I tried appeared not to work.

How many passwords will soon be hanging on the walls of various cubes and conference rooms?

No full resolution examples that I can look at?

I just ran their example (Rails): https://commits.io/builds/de927875458

Here's some more:

iojs/io.js - https://commits.io/builds/1e68cd56c34

progit/progit - https://commits.io/builds/12e3174c300

torvalds/linux - https://commits.io/builds/c594eefd2a6

dotnet/coreclr - Never finished extracting. Waited for 5 minutes.

chromatic/modern_perl_book - https://commits.io/builds/028f52f571c

Is there some type of estimate of how many character you need to fill up one of these posters? I wouldn't mind getting one of a particularly tricky module I wrote as a POC for my presentation at the SAM conference last year but it's probably only 300 LOC total.

If anyone wants the linux kernel on their wall : https://commits.io/builds/88548595a3c (or at least a chunk of it)

I find this service a bit expensive for something that can be made in 10 minutes with illustrator - maybe if I get fantastic glossy paper, but it doesn't seem to mention much about the paper specs.

I'm curious about the paper quality as well- it seems like it would be way cheaper for me to do this myself and get it printed locally.

> 10 minutes

Basically what it does is grab some files from the repository, removes newlines and prints it.

    cat $(find -type f | shuf -n 1) | tr -d '\n' | print

That didn't take me 10 minutes to come up with, let alone run.

Since this is for git repositories you'd probably want to sub that `find -type f' for `git ls-files'.

They should really be caching the poster after each render. I've been staring at a loading screen for a while now.

My time estimate included opening illustrator, layout out the code and printing it :)

As somebody that rarely uses illustrator or other graphical software, spending $30 or $50 for something neat like turning my code into a poster that I can hang on the wall is easily worth it — despite how little time it might take someone else to fire up illustrator or bang out some script.

Costco will print arbitrary images up to 36x24 (their largest size here) for under $10.

$40 for running a shell script and sending the file to the printer seems a bit excessive.

Awesome idea. Is there are also a similar service in a do-it-yourself way, without having to put your code into the open as that's a no-go for companies with private code bases.

For example I work for a game development studio and this seems like a cool idea to make some posters of our games, but giving our code base to a company like commit would never be allowed by management.

I think you should let people know you plan on cloning the entire repo. You are currently cloning chromium.git, sorry :)

Server is being hugged to death. Can't seem to do anything at the moment. The idea is very cool though I would definitely use this, I'd perhaps even pay for it. Most Devs are fond of their code because they put work in to it. It's a cool idea for a bedroom or living room talking piece.

Yeah, went to Product Hunt front page and HN front page in the same hour. I don't think I can do much.

It looks nice, without a doubt. But I'd be more inclined to buy a poster that I can look at and remember that particular piece of code that was a pain to write/debug[#].

The poster can be a good thing to get after shipping a milestone!

[#] maybe displayed as a big "snake" with all the code put together

Good insight. Will be working on some of the features people have suggested. First milestone was the original use case I had. I shy away from changing the code too much.

Would be nice if it would exclude comments. My poster seems to be mostly made out of GPL ramble.

It looks like you can exclude certain files, did you try excluding the licenses?

She/He probably has a GPL "comment header" in every source file, that might be a little bit more tricky to remove :)

Do the repo owners get a cut? :)

I tried it on Clojure then imagined how guilty I'd feel buying it knowing Rich Hickey wouldn't get any money but the printers would get lots, hah.

Nice. Also try https://code.google.com/p/gource/ for visualizing the git history.

It would be nice if you could add Support for IPad. I cannot copy/paste the url. As soon as I tap on the url field, I toggle the info text box.

Should be fixed

Pointed it at Dolphin Emulator:

https://commits.io/builds/e217f8be3dd

Doesn't work.

I applaud you not only for this idea, but for keeping the site up because I imagine everyone will be pounding it just as much as me :)

You don't know the half of it. Hopefully people are understanding and try again at a later time. Runs flawlessly when the user load is under a thousand :D.

Just a quick heads up, United Kingdom is between Gabon and Grenada.

A few other countries seem to be in the wrong place too when ordering.

Perhaps they use country code GB as an internal name for sorting.

Sweet! Make sure to allow typing in repository address without the http(s):// protocol

Make the code conform to the form of an image that the user uploads, and I'll buy a dozen.

This is awesome!

I need this printed on t-shirts!

How do you indicate you want the shape overlays, like the Rails logo and such?

Fun stuff, also, is this typo on purpose? "Comming soon"

This is so cool, I need to get a print of that.

for me it just adds all the code in all the files and displays it in a small font.. something wrong in my repo?

you need to click "customize" and add a logo or other graphic

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