
Creating a custom Git flow visualization - cwebbdesign
http://blog.funda.nl/creating-a-custom-git-flow-visualization/
======
PeterWhittaker
Summary: Author created a Stash-based visualization tool that takes the output
of _git log --graph --oneline --decorate --all_ and renders a pretty diagram.

Quite nice, actually. Not open source, as it is a private side project of the
company, but examples are available on GitHub (cf TFA).

~~~
teunduynstee
It actually doesn't take the output of 'git log' at all. That output is
visualized by many other libraries already (nicer, frankly). What I have done
is create a completely different graph, inspired by the chart presented with
git-flow by Vincent Driessen ([http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-
branching-model/](http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/)).

Main difference is that the develop and master branch always run all the way
to the top. Take any public Github repo and compare the output of
beta.gitflowchart.com/ with the git-log output. It is not the same thing.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Ah, OK, thanks. That wasn't clear to me from the article, but then, I was
likely skimming and not reading in detail.

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me_bx
Funny that the library is not open source, but still they do host it on a
public github repo. Doesn't make much sense to me, and there should be some
clarifications on what is authorized and what is not.

Github is "Free for open source projects", I have always wondered what
definition they would use for "open source". Looked for it a few years ago,
and didn't find it. Any clue on what's acceptable policy for them? Maybe they
consider that public repo = open source, because code is accessible?

~~~
teunduynstee
Hi, I am the author of the library on Github.

First of all, Github is not free for Open Source, it is free for public
projects ([https://github.com/pricing](https://github.com/pricing)). Not just
for OSS, if the repo is public, it is free.

Is Git Flow Chart Open Source? No, it is not. Choosing an OSS license would
make it hard to make money on the plugin. On Atlassians marketplace, this
means that if your project is OSS, you get it for free, but if you are a
paying user of Stash, you also pay for the plugin. We want to follow the same
lines with Github: public repos are free, so you can use the chart on them for
free. If you pay for a private repo at GitHub, for now, you cannot use the
chart. We may make it available, but at a cost. However, we do want to share
the code and allow you to inspect, study and contribute improvements. The core
code of Git Flow Chart is hosted on GitHub. It is a javascript library and
comes with unit tests and a standalone HTML page that allows you to test
improvements locally. Feel free to fork.

~~~
me_bx
Thanks,

I'm glad to learn gitHub rephrased their offer from "free for open source" to
"free for public projects", it's more straightforward.

You might want to create a LICENSE.md, or to make the following sentence stand
out in your README, right now it's buried in the middle of a paragraph: "I
will keep use of the plug-in free for non-commercial and personal use."

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idlemind
Very nice, I've always been dissatisfied with most visualisations of real git
repos using git flow. It's really hard to explain to non-devs the state of the
branches, ideally the roadmap to the next release would be glanceable.

We're looking to build an AtlasBoard for our project and the ideas here are
very useful. We use bitbucket, so I'm not sure how similar the APIs there are
to Stash, but one would hope they are similar enough that your code points us
in the right direction.

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daviross
This looks really slick. I've seen some good and not-so-good visualizations of
_git log --graph --decorate --all_ (I always end up mapping this to 'git
map'), and this looks nicely clean.

My biggest question though, is on the Github permissions. It requires
read/write access on all user data (and public repositories), but I'd expect
read access being all that's required.

~~~
rbolte
Thanks for the feedback on the GitHub permissions. We will evaluate the
necessity of the current scopes and revise them or better explain their use in
the Privacy Policy. As the domain name already suggest: this is a BETA
version. We are still working out the details of our service!

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davvid
[shameless plug] git-cola/git-dag[1] can do this kind of visualization[2], and
you can interact with the nodes too (checkout files, diff, etc).

[1] [https://github.com/git-cola/git-cola](https://github.com/git-cola/git-
cola)

[2] [https://git-cola.github.io/screenshots.html](https://git-
cola.github.io/screenshots.html)

~~~
teunduynstee
No, those are looking way nicer. But they just render the git-log output,
whereas the chart presented here does a different kind of chart, specifically
for git-flow.

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heinrich5991
If you're looking for something that can do this in the command line, check
out `tig`. It also supports blames, etc.

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cmpb
This is the area where I feel that Atlassian's SourceTree really shines. It is
still an effective tool for manipulating git with a GUI, but the git branching
display is insanely useful.

~~~
yskchu
Thanks for highlighting it, just downloaded... it's even free!

[https://www.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/overview](https://www.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/overview)

