Re: gitk screenshots of complex history

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> writes:

> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, 27 Jul 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
>> > 
>> > I just compared my own history to Linus' linux-2.6 history.
>> > The kernel team can't hold a candle to this mess.
>> 
>> Rather on purpose, I might add. I've actually been fairly anal about 
>> having people maintain clean histories, to the point where I refuse to 
>> pull from trees that don't do a good enough job.
>
> For 4 of our internal repositories I've taken that policy up now
> myself, and nobody is allowed to create releases from them except me.
> This has helped.  A lot.  So does sensible use of `git rebase -i`.
> You and Junio have really sold me on the value of having someone
> play a very strict gatekeeper role.  I get better work product from
> my coworkers this way too.  They know someone else is looking at
> what they are doing and try harder.
>
> But it doesn't help the really old history, nor does it help
> the repository these images came from.  I don't own/control that
> development.  I just provide git help as much as I can.

One idea I have not yet put into any code is using graphviz for
creating a nice (possibly clickable) layout of a commit history.  It
might be able to rearrange things such that the long parallel lines
get avoided.  Could be an interesting feature for the HTML
visualizers.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum