My last semester’s project was a group software engineering assignment. We used Git for version control and specifically used a private Github account with the intention of open sourcing the code. The only task that remains is moving the sensitive data into a central configuration file. Instead of doing that, I transformed our repository into a video using Gource:
While I don’t share the exact level of hate of macports as him, I ended up using part of Matt Hutchinson’s excellent guide for Gource on OSX. Gource has a slew of options and allows you to generate videos from git repositories, as well as Mercurial, Bazaar, and SVN. I ended up removing files from the video, since it cluttered the screen. I also highlighted directories and users and scaled users to a size of 1.6. You can adjust the speed of the video too. Be careful though: it’s a fine line between flurrying and boring. You’re even able to specify images for each specific contributor if you choose to do so. There are several scripts available online that attempt to import gravatars based on the repositories configuration information.
Gource is a fun way of visualizing the work put into any repository. Every project that can be gource’d should be gource’d.
Another shout-out to Mike Greb for initially showing me Gource. Obviously none of this would have happened if he didn’t know about all of the cool things ahead of time.