Hi,
I've recently been experimenting with using git to make software more
human-readable. Presenting software for humans to read is not a new
idea (Knuth's 'literate programming'), but I think git can be a new
tool for showing the development of code in a structured way.
Merge-commits can break a flat sequence of commits into sections and
subsections, in the same way that a document's paragraphs are
arranged. The hierarchical organisation is helpful when reading the
history, and also allows that history to be rendered into a structured
document explaining the code's development.
As a demo, I've created:
http://www.redfrontdoor.org/20160813-literate-git-demo/index.html
This was generated directly from the git repo of the project, using
tools I wrote:
https://github.com/bennorth/literate-git
For working with hierarchical git histories, I wrote another tool:
https://github.com/bennorth/git-dendrify
The READMEs of the two projects give more details of these ideas.
This is at the prototype / proof-of-concept stage --- any feedback welcome!
Thanks,
Ben.
