November 17, 2013

Gource Visualization of Ubuntu Touch Core Apps Development

TLDR: I made a cool version control visualization of all the Ubuntu Touch Core Apps.

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAmKAgRS0tw

* Warning: abrasive techno music
* To be watched in HD, preferably at maximum volume


Making Gource visualizations of complex software projects is awesome. I love seeing a VCS commit log come to life as blooming trees and swarming workers. Normally, I do a visualization video of a single repository. But in this case, I used a bash script to create a visualization of multiple source code repositories. I wanted to see the progress of the entire stack of Ubuntu Touch Core Apps (17 projects). Ubuntu Touch Core Apps is an umbrella project for all [17] of the core apps that are available in Ubuntu on mobile devices

The Ubuntu Touch Core Apps:

  • Dropping Letters
  • Evernote Online Accounts plugin
  • QtDeclarative bindings for the Grilo media scanner
  • Stock Ticker App
  • Sudoku App
  • Ubuntu Calculator App
  • Ubuntu Calendar App
  • Ubuntu Clock App
  • Ubuntu Document Viewer App
  • Ubuntu E-mail App
  • Ubuntu Facebook App
  • Ubuntu File Manager App
  • Ubuntu Music App
  • Ubuntu Phone Commons
  • Ubuntu RSS Feed Reader App
  • Ubuntu Terminal App
  • Ubuntu Weather App

Making the visualization:

Assuming you have a bunch of source code repositories already branched/cloned locally, here is a general version of the script to generate visualization videos of multiple projects/repositories: https://gist.github.com/cgoldberg/7488521

The script I used to create the Ubuntu Touch Core Apps video: https://gist.github.com/cgoldberg/7516510