Repo Visualization
Dev tools
code visualization
SHOW HN2021
283points
96comments
#124of 2,533 in 2021
Top 5%of 2021 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
11 positive, 12 neutral or asking, 6 mixed, 20 critical, out of 49 comments about the project. Thread score -0.14.
Idea: 7 for, 5 againstDesign: 2 for, 7 againstPerformance: 0 for, 7 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Useful for understanding structure and onboarding to new codebases
From 3 comments
Personally I find it interesting as tools like these have been helping me to understand the team's and delivery dynamics when I'm joining new dev-teams. This particular is great,…
hevalon on HNI find that it's useful not just to look at the current contents of codebase, but how it has evolved over time. For example, after being onboarded, this lets me see where most of…
KronisLV on HNI found this useful on my project. I realized I have many 'dusts' files in directories. Tiny little guys just like grains of sand nestling among the larger circles, looking to be…
graderjs on HN
Search and excluded paths make it more useful
From 1 comment
This is so cool. I really appreciate how they added the "Search for a file" and "Excluded paths" to the demo. Makes it a lot more useful while still so simple to use. Edit: the…
breck on HN
Objections
Labels too small and hard to read; zooming and panning lose context
From 1 comment
Apologies for the hot take, but imo GitHub has been really knocking it out of the park with terrible ideas lately (remember how everyone fell all over themselves during the…
dvt on HN
Does not show semantic structure or component interactions
From 1 comment
I honestly don't understand the point of this. Is it just a visualization of the directory structure? I expect code visualization to more or less ignore the file structure and…
hsn915 on HN
Circles waste space and make labels hard to read
From 1 comment
This is cool but using rectangles instead of circles would help this visualization. Circles waste real estate and not friendly to labels (e.g. curved text that is harder to read)
juancampa on HN
Performance problems: browser tabs freeze or crash on large repos
From 3 comments
Oddly enough, the page partially loads, hangs, crashes the tab and attempts to reload, hangs, and then crashes the entire running mobile chrome instance on my phone. I don't…
fire on HNPerhaps it's not fair, but the first repo I thought of trying, aws/aws-cli caused it to freeze my browser's tab. When it finally unfroze, I'm presented with a few large circles…
banana_giraffe on HNIs this site critically slow in firefox for anyone else or just me? It's running at around 1fps...
zkldi on HN
Requests
Multiple size metrics such as lines of code or file count
From 1 comment
I like the quick insights I can gain from this! Very promising. It's very basic in it's current implementation but I see a lot of potential specially about the "how files are…
hashhar on HN
Color distinction for file types, and support for Rust
From 2 comments
Took a look at my own codebase, which is 99% Rust. All gray, I'm guessing Rust isn't currently a recognized file type? Either way, very nice! I currently use the "dirtree" tool…
noproto on HNRandom nitpick: the issue with color coding files is that you may have many different file types leading to colors that overlap. Case in point in the author's create-react-app…
gnrlst on HN
Show dependency files on opt-in
From 1 comment
Weird seeing this as a Show HN. That said: since MS and GitHub are the same company… one of the things I really want is to be able to opt in to reference/search into…
eyelidlessness on HN
Questions
How is each part arranged in the layout?
From 1 comment
I tried with https://github.com/racket/racket and for some reason it puts all the content of the subfolder "racket"/"src" in a vertical strip near the middle of the circle…
gus_massa on HN
Can it show git history and evolution over time?
From 2 comments
Is there anything like this, but for visualising the connections between git commits, files, GitHub issues, maybe even classes etc...?
cameronbrown on HNI worked on something like this a few years ago, only in VR so you could walk around the visualization and use your spatial recognition abilities in 3D. One part we struggled…
akdas on HN
Alternatives named
Gource
From 3 comments
My favorite tool for visualizing a codebase is Gource. Here's a 1 minute visualization of the Linux Kernel repository from 1991-2015…
rckrd on HNVery cool! Reminds me a little bit of gource. https://gource.io/
arriu on HNI find that it's useful not just to look at the current contents of codebase, but how it has evolved over time. For example, after being onboarded, this lets me see where most of…
KronisLV on HN
CodeScene
From 3 comments
Have you looked at CodeScene at all?
eenell on HNThat's the same visualisation used by CodeScene (https://codescene.com/how-it-works/), but there is a more elaborate one that represents affinity (number of connections) as…
pron on HNThat's a great visual presentation, but not really an innovation. The CodeScene tool has that built in together with a set of deep analyses on top (see https://codescene.com/).…
nephrenka on HN
Sourcetrail
From 1 comment
The best tool I found for exploring code bases and navigating large projects is https://www.sourcetrail.com/.
nvartolomei on HN
dirtree and eralchemy
From 1 comment
Took a look at my own codebase, which is 99% Rust. All gray, I'm guessing Rust isn't currently a recognized file type? Either way, very nice! I currently use the "dirtree" tool…
noproto on HN