{"id":1226,"date":"2010-03-21T16:58:41","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T01:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kellyrob99.com\/blog\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2010-03-21T17:02:22","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T02:02:22","slug":"gource-visualizations-of-the-groovygrailsgriffon-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kellyrob99.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/21\/gource-visualizations-of-the-groovygrailsgriffon-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Gource Visualizations of the Groovy\/Grails\/Griffon Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s a whole lot of Gr8ness in the title, don’t you think? Ok, ok – I apologize for the pun. I whipped these up using the open source Gource<\/a> visualization software and with HD content free on Youtube<\/a> now, I just had to try that out too.<\/p>\n

Gource<\/h2>\n

Gource is a software version control<\/a> visualization program with support for Git<\/a>, Mercurial<\/a>, and with a tiny bit of extra effort, CVS<\/a> and Subversion<\/a>. It’s available as a macport install, as is the ffmpeg program used to stitch together a series of screenshots into the final video.  All of these visualizations were created with Git or Git-svn. When the Gource program is running it brings up an interactive window so you can interact with it to a degree, affecting the camera, zoom, etc.  The default resolution is 1024×768 but I tried to bump it up to 1920×1080. I’m assuming that stretched the limits of the rendering, as there’s quite a bit of pixellation in the final product; either that or the ffmpeg params need to be tweaked. The three visualizations on this page were all created using this one-liner command line invocation (broken down here over several lines for readability).<\/p>\n

\r\ngource -1920x1080 --highlight-all-users --bloom-intensity .3 -a 1 -s .01 \r\n     --hide-dirnames --hide-filenames --stop-at-end --output-ppm-stream - \r\n     | ffmpeg -y -b 3000K -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - \r\n     -vcodec libx264 -vpre default  gource.mp4\r\n<\/pre>\n
Groovy<\/h2>\n
From the initial commit on August 28, 2003, Groovy has come a long way. I tried the Gource provided python script to translate an svn log file into the required format the first time, but cloning the repository with git-svn seemed to produce better results. It’s interesting to see that the overall structure of the Groovy project doesn’t look like is has changed very much over the years. I recognized a lot of the names you see on the screen. Be sure to watch the 1080p<\/a> version if you’re having trouble reading the text and see if you can’t find some recognizable committers.<\/p>\n\n
Grails<\/h2>\n
Starting on Sunday March 14, 2004 here’s how it all unfolded, at least  from the perspective of the public Git repository. Grails looks like it grew a little more spontaneously than Groovy; there are more frequent restructurings and some transitions that seem to cover a whole lot of ground in very little time. In particular watch out for the burst of activity in the summer of 2009.<\/p>\n\n
Griffon<\/h2>\n
September 17, 2008 marks the first commit for Griffon and this short but sweet video explodes right from the start. Benefiting greatly from the Grails model this project shows a lot of progress in a very short time indeed. Most, if not all, of the names you see here you probably caught in the previous two videos as well.
\n<\/p>\n
What’s the Point?<\/h2>\n
Watching these gives me (and maybe you) some appreciation for how much effort over time it takes to bring a new language\/framework\/technology to maturity and all of the individual contributions that go into it. Gource provides a lot more detail into the actual structure if you want to dig in. For purposes of keeping these images fairly uncluttered I removed file and directory names and just focused on the committers and the general structure. I think I gained a git of insight into how a codebase can evolve, and properly appreciate that organizing the increasing complexity of an ever-growing system over time is not a simple job. Plus they look cool. Enjoy!<\/p>\n
\"Reblog<\/a>