Graphically visualize software development with Gource

Gource is a very cool open source visualization tool to get a graphical view on the check-ins of source code in a version control system like GIT, SubVersion, CVS, ...

http://code.google.com/p/gource/

This is a video of the development of FxGqlC 2.x, generated with Gource:



It is very easy to generate a video like this based on your source control system. In the explanation below I used Windows, but all the tools were originally developed for Unix.

• Local snapshot of the source code
  (You can skip this step if you already have a local copy of a source controlled project in GIT, SubVersion,...)
  I started from a local snapshot of the last version of the source code. The FxGqlC source code is hosted on GitHub, a public GIT version control repository. 

• You first need to install the client of the version control system. In this case: the GIT client the GIT client for Windows.
  http://git-scm.com/downloads
• Install to the default location "c:\Program Files" (or "c:\program files (x86)" on 64-bit Windows) 
• Open the GIT-console (bash) from the start menu, and execute these commands to get a local copy of the source code:
  $ mkdir ~/Documents/FxGqlC-Source
  $ cd ~/Documents/FxGqlC-Source
  $ git clone https://github.com/WimObiwan/FxGqlC.git
• Set up Gource and run Gource
• Download gource from http://code.google.com/p/gource/ (I used the Windows build of version 0.38, posted on 2012-04-23)
• Unzip to c:\temp\gource
• Open a command prompt to start Gource:
  cd %userprofile%\Documents\FxGqlC-Source\FxGqlC
  SET PATH=%PATH%;c:\program files\git\bin
  On 64-bit Windows, use instead:
  SET PATH=%PATH%;c:\program files (x86)\git\bin
  c:\temp\gource\gource.exe
• Gource gets the necessary information from the GIT-server, and the video is played.
• To generate the video in WMV format:
• First generate the video in PPM format with this command:
  .\Gource\gource.exe -o fxgqlc-gource.ppm
• Download ffmpeg: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ffmpeg
• Unzip to c:\temp
• Cd c:\temp
• ffmpeg.exe -y -r 25 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i fxgqlc-gource.ppm -vcodec wmv1 -r 25 -sameq fxgqlc-gource.wmv
• The video fxgqlc-gource.wmv can be played with a media player or uploaded to YouTube.
• On YouTube, you find several Gource videos of big open-source projects:
• Linux: http://youtu.be/ntTpM8hfl_E
• MySQL: http://youtu.be/s98-5rZIVyk
• Python: http://youtu.be/aPk1BqK8zzI
• Perl: http://youtu.be/jl9HVEJl_-w
• PHP: http://youtu.be/jhbzEwxbCfI

Update: have a look at "http://mycomputeradventures.blogspot.be/2012/07/gource-video-of-fxgqlc-22.html" on how to create a gource video on Ubuntu.