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Show HN: Pretty Git Tree – Your Git history as generative art (hmillerbakewell.github.io)

2 points by hda-hda ↗ HN
I've spent months building something complex and (so far) invisible. I know that the number of commits, branches, merges etc. aren't proof of progress, but what I needed was a way to represent the amount of effort I'd put in that wasn't "proximity to burnout".

Pretty-git-tree takes in your git history (just the commit structure, and it stays local to your browser) and gives you a visually interesting representation of it. For my own projects I use the "qubits" style which winds a quantum circuit around a space-filling curve. I've included snapshots of some famous git repositories as well.

I didn't want to just use the standard git tree, because I felt that there were so many different ways of exploring the data - plus I wanted it to look good at the top of a weekly standup report. I've included the four styles I expect people to use, plus another 15 or so styles in the repo where I wanted to try things out (like rendering the branches as tower-blocks in a city, or kintsugi fractures). The repo itself is MIT licensed, and suggestions are welcome.

2 comments

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NikSimDev
Good work, I think you should build the tree simply based on the repository link. It should work like this: the user sends a link to the repo, the site clones it and calls the command itself. It will be better for the user if they have to do fewer actions. Of course, this will only work with public repositories, but if we keep the current implementation and also offer the user what I mentioned above, it will be great.