Git — the big picture
Project description
git-big-picture
git-big-picture is a visualization tool for Git repositories. You can think of it as a filter that removes uninteresting commits from a DAG modelling a Git repository and thereby exposes the big picture: for example the hierarchy of tags and branches. git-big-picture supports convenience output options and can filter different classes of commits. It uses the Graphviz utility to render images that are pleasing to the eye.
A Small Example
Imagine the following Graph:
0.1.1 0.1.2
| |
0.0 G---H---I---J---K---L---M maint
| /
A---B---C---D---E---F master
| \ /
0.1 N---O---P topic
Where the following commits have Branches and Tags:
A -> 0.0
B -> 0.1
F -> master
H -> 0.1.1
J -> 0.1.2
M -> maint
P -> topic
The reduced graph of interesting commits would be:
H---J---M
/
A---B---F
\ /
P
But since the commits would be labeled with their refs, it would look more like (within the limits of ASCII art):
0.1.1---0.1.2---maint
/
0.0---0.1---master
\ /
topic
Demo Video
Chuwei Lu has made a YouTube video showing how to use git-big-picture:
Screenshots
Courtesy of Graphviz, git-big-picture can output nice images.
Here is the original repository from the example above:
And here is the reduced version:
We also have a real world examples from:
Dependencies
Python >=3.8
Git (1.7.1 works)
Graphviz utility
pytest and Cram (only for running tests)
Installation
As of v0.10.1 you may install it from PyPI:
https://pypi.org/project/git-big-picture/
$ pip install git-big-picture
Alternatively, just run it straight from a Git clone:
$ git clone https://github.com/git-big-picture/git-big-picture.git
$ cd git-big-picture
$ python3 -m venv venv # creates a virtualenv
$ source venv/bin/activate # activates the virtualenv
$ pip install -e . # installs to the virtualenv
$ git-big-picture --help
Alternatively, use pip to install it system wide or just for the user.
$ pip install .
(may need root privileges)
$ pip install --user .
Git Integration
After installation using pip, you can easily integrate this script as a regular Git command, by making sure that executable git-big-picture is found during ${PATH} lookup. E.g. you could append a line like export PATH="${HOME}/.local/bin:${PATH}" to your ~/.bashrc if you are using Bash.
You may then use git big-picture (w/o the first dash) as you would any other Git command:
$ git big-picture -h
Or create an alias:
$ git config --global alias.bp big-picture
$ git bp -h
Internals
The graph operations are written in Python and output the graph-data in the easy-to-write Graphviz syntax. This is converted into an image using the Graphviz dot utility. Graphviz supports a multitude of image formats, e.g. SVG and PDF. Check that Graphviz is installed by invoking: dot -V.
Usage
$ git-big-picture --help
usage: git-big-picture OPTIONS [REPOSITORY]
Visualize Git repositories
positional arguments:
REPOSITORY path to the Git working directory
(default: current directory)
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--version show program's version number and exit
--pstats FILE run cProfile profiler writing pstats output to FILE
-d, --debug activate debug output
output options:
Options to control output and format
-f FMT, --format FMT set output format [svg, png, ps, pdf, ...]
--history-direction {downwards,leftwards,rightwards,upwards}
enforce a specific direction of history on Graphviz
(default: rightwards)
--simplify remove edges implied by transitivity using Graphviz
filter "tred" (default: do not remove implied edges)
-g, --graphviz output lines suitable as input for dot/graphviz
-G, --no-graphviz disable dot/graphviz output
-p, --processed output the dot processed, binary data
-P, --no-processed disable binary output
-v CMD, --viewer CMD write image to tempfile and start specified viewer
-V, --no-viewer disable starting viewer
-o FILE, --outfile FILE
write image to specified file
-O, --no-outfile disable writing image to file
-w SECONDS, --wait SECONDS
wait for SECONDS seconds before deleting the temporary
file that is opened using the viewer command (default:
2.0 seconds); this helps e.g. with viewer commands that
tell other running processes to open that file on their
behalf, to then shut themselves down
filter options:
Options to control commit/ref selection
-a, --all include all commits
-b, --branches show commits pointed to by branches
-B, --no-branches do not show commits pointed to by branches
-t, --tags show commits pointed to by tags
-T, --no-tags do not show commits pointed to by tags
-r, --roots show root commits
-R, --no-roots do not show root commits
-m, --merges include merge commits
-M, --no-merges do not include merge commits
-i, --bifurcations include bifurcation commits; a bifurcation commit is a
commit that is a parent to more than one other commits,
i.e. it marks the point where one or more new branches
came to life; bifurcation commits can also be thought of
as the counterpart of merge commits
-I, --no-bifurcations
do not include bifurcation commits
-c, --commit-messages
include commit messages on labels
-C, --no-commit-messages
do not include commit messages on labels
git-big-picture is software libre, licensed under the GPL v3 or later license.
Please report bugs at https://github.com/git-big-picture/git-big-picture/issues — thank you!
Usage Examples
There are two related groups of options, the output and the filter options. Output options govern the output and format produced by the tool. Filter options govern which commits to include when calculating the reduced graph.
Using Output Options
Generate PNG version of current Git repository and save to our-project.png:
$ git-big-picture -o our-project.png
Generate SVG (default format) image of the repository in ~/git-repo and view the result in Firefox:
$ git-big-picture -v firefox ~/git-repo/
If you specify the format and a filename with extension, the filename extension will be used:
$ git-big-picture -f svg -o our-project.png
$ file our-project.png
our-project.png: PNG image data, 216 x 325, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced
If you don’t have an extension, you could still specify a format:
$ git-big-picture -f pdf -o our-project
warning: Filename had no suffix, using format: pdf
Otherwise the default format SVG is used:
$ git-big-picture -o our-project
warning: Filename had no suffix, using default format: svg
If you would like to use an alternative viewer, specify viewer and its format:
$ git-big-picture -f pdf -v xpdf
You can also open the viewer automatically on the output file:
$ git-big-picture -v xpdf -o our-project.pdf
Output raw Graphviz syntax:
$ git-big-picture -g
Output raw Graphviz output (i.e. the image):
$ git-big-picture -p
Note however, that the options in the two examples above are both mutually exclusive and incompatible with other output options.
$ git-big-picture -g -p
fatal: Options '-g | --graphviz' and '-p | --processed' are mutually exclusive.
$ git-big-picture -g -v firefox
fatal: Options '-g | --graphviz' and '-p | --processed' are incompatible with other output options.
Manually pipe the Graphviz commands to the dot utility:
$ git-big-picture --graphviz ~/git-repo | dot -Tpng -o graph.png
Using Filter Options
The three options --branches --tags and --roots are active by default. You can use the negation switches to turn them off. These use the uppercase equivalent of the short option and the prefix no- for the long option. For example: -B | --no-branches to deactivate showing branches.
Show all interesting commits, i.e. show also merges and bifurcations:
$ git-big-picture -i -m
Show only roots (deactivate branches and tags):
$ git-big-picture -B -T
Show merges and branches only (deactivate tags):
$ git-big-picture -m -T
Show all commits:
$ git-big-picture -a
Configuration
The standard git config infrastructure can be used to configure git-big-picture. Most of the command line arguments can be configured in a big-picture section. For example, to configure firefox as a viewer
$ git config --global big-picture.viewer firefox
Will create the following section and entry in your ~/.gitconfig:
[big-picture]
viewer = firefox
The command line negation arguments can be used to disable a setting configured via the command line. For example, if you have configured the viewer above and try to use the -g | --graphviz switch, you will get the following error:
$ git-big-picture -g
fatal: Options '-g | --graphviz' and '-p | --processed' are incompatible with other output options.
… since you already have a viewer configured. In this case, use the negation option -V | --no-viewer to disable the viewer setting from the config file:
$ git-big-picture -g -V
Development
git-big-picture uses pre-commit, both locally and in the CI. To activate the same local pre-commit Git hooks for yourself, you could do:
$ pip install pre-commit
$ pre-commit install --install-hooks
When you do a commit after that, pre-commit will run the checks configured in file .pre-commit-config.yaml.
Testing
The Python code is tested with test runner pytest:
$ ./test.py
The command line interface is tested with Cram:
$ PATH="venv/bin:${PATH}" ./test.cram
Debugging
You can use the [-d | --debug] switch to debug:
$ git-big-picture -d -v firefox
Although debugging output is somewhat sparse…
Profiling
There are two ways to profile git-big-picture, using the built-in --pstats option or using the Python module cProfile:
Using --pstats:
$ git-big-picture --pstats=profile-stats -o graph.svg
… will write the profiler output to profile-stats.
Profile the script with cProfile
$ python -m cProfile -o profile-stats git-big-picture -o graph.svg
In either case, you can then use the excellent visualisation tool gprof2dot which, incidentally, uses Graphviz too:
$ gprof2dot -f pstats profile-stats | dot -Tsvg -o profile_stats.svg
Changelog
v1.3.0 — 2024-03-08
New Features and Improvements
Dropped Features
Drop support for end-of-life Python 3.7 (#335)
v1.2.2 — 2022-09-27
Under the Hood
Fix cram tests for grep >=3.8 (#233)
v1.2.1 — 2022-03-26
v1.2.0 — 2022-03-01
New Features and Improvements
Dropped Features
Drop support for end-of-life Python 3.6 (#162)
v1.1.1 — 2021-01-20
v1.1.0 — 2021-01-20
New Features and Improvements
Under the Hood
v1.0.0 — 2021-01-13
Security Fixes
CVE-2021-3028 — Fix local code execution through attacker controlled branch names (#62)
New Features and Improvements
Re-joined forces and moved https://github.com/esc/git-big-picture to new org home https://github.com/git-big-picture/git-big-picture
Support history directions other than upwards (#35, #36, #59)
Allow including commit messages in node labels (#16, #31, #32)
Support python -m git_big_picture (#58)
Improved --help output (#54)
Improve tempfile prefix (#68)
Add support for Python 3.8 and 3.9 (#42)
Dropped Features
Drop support for end-of-life versions of Python (2.7, 3.4, 3.5) (#38)
Bugs Fixed
Under the Hood
screenshots: Reduce image size using lossless zopflipng 1.0.3 (#39)
Apply move of Git repository to all URLs but Travis CI (#40)
Replace Travis CI by GitHub Actions (#41)
Make CI cover support for macOS (#44)
Make GitHub Dependabot keep our GitHub Actions up to date (#45, #46)
Integrate pre-commit for dev and CI (#47, #53, #55)
For safety, stop using shlex.split (outside of tests) (#48, #65)
Migrate from unmaintained Cram to maintained Scruf (#50, #64)
Delete empty requirements.txt (#52)
Migrate from optparse to argparse (#54)
Fix variable mix-up (#57)
Start using standard setuptools entry point (#58)
Address dead test code (#60)
Start measuring code coverage (#61)
setup.py: Replace ASCII “–” with “—” (em dash) in description (#69)
Readme: Improve section on people involved (#71)
tests: Cover option precedence on the command line (#72)
Document changes of release 1.0.0 (#74)
Release version 1.0.0 (#76)
v0.10.1 — 2018-11-04
Fix PyPI release
v0.10.0 — 2018-11-04
v0.9.0 — 2012-11-20
rst-ify readme
Fix long standing bug in graph search algorithm
Fix long standing conversion from tabbed to 4-spaces
Overhaul and refactor the test-suite
Remove old --some crufty code and option
Add ability to find root-, merge- and bifurcation-commits
Overhaul command line interface with new options
Add command line interface tests using Cram
Overhaul documentation to reflect changes
v0.8.0 — 2012-11-05
Snapshot of all developments Mar 2010 - Now
Extended command line options for viewing and formatting
Option to filter on all, some or decorated commits
Simple test suite for python module and command line
License
Licensed under GPL v3 or later, see file COPYING for details.
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