👋 Looking for maintainers

[nicoespeon]

Hi everyone!

I just became dad few days ago 🎉 🍼

Thus, it became clear to me that I need to focus my energy and limit the number of project I run in parallel. In terms of personal open-source side-projects, I'll focus my efforts on Abracadabra, a VS Code extension that provides automated refactorings for JS / TS.

It has been a long time I'm running Gitgraph.js with my friend @fabien0102. We created this project so we could easily draw simple git graphs, directly in the browser, to use for blog posts and presentations. These days however, I don't use it much anymore.

However, you can see with the currently open issues that people have different, interesting suggestions to cover more use-cases. Also, there are bugs to fix. Finally, the overall documentation of the library could be improved.

I won't have the time & energy to tackle these. Not in my foreseeable future at least. Thus, I'm looking for new people to maintain the library and take over the project.

I'll be able to provide guidance and onboard you on the project if you want. You'll see that the dev environment is "not that bad", with features essentially covered with tests (unit & E2E).

Let me know if you're interested. In the meantime, be aware that I won't work on the open issues myself.

[marekyggdrasil]

@nicoespeon indeed managing such project is time consuming and it is understandable you have to prioritise to keep everything going.

I reviewed gitgraph.js repo and I find it understandable and test coverage is good as well.

I have some fresh ideas, I think this library could be used for more than just git graphs, personally I use it to take notes (in my research work I often have to explore many ideas simultaneously and at some point I realised git graphs with branches are good way to keep track of what is going on).

As you said you don't use use it much anymore, while for me it is a tool I use daily at work so I would like to help you out and dedicate some of my time to keep it running, resolve issues, bugs, help with docs etc.

If you want me to join in, feel free to reach me either here, e-mail or gitter, whatever the mean of communication you prefer.

[nicoespeon]

@marekyggdrasil awesome. I'm on mobile right now but I'll reach you out next week to set you up with everything you need. Thank you, a lot ❤️

[nicoespeon]

@marekyggdrasil I don't know if you saw that, but I replied to you with all details on Gitter 😉

[marekyggdrasil]

Sorry for delay, replied! I'm onboard!

[lorarjohns]

Hi! I've just spent the last couple of days so enamoured of gitgraph that I've been wandering around in the codebase and writing custom code with it for hours. if you'd like another helping hand I'm happy to assist :)

[nicoespeon]

Hi @lorarjohns 👋

I think it would be awesome if you could assist indeed. I'll add you as a collaborator too, so you can help @marekyggdrasil who started replying to the currently open issues.

Regarding Gitgraph.js maintenance, here's what I shared with Marek, so anyone have a transparent view on the current status of the lib:

Here's my TL;DR of the good things of Gitgraph.js v2

• Separation of the core from the rendering libs. It means we can provide the library in different technologies (React, vanilla JS, Angular, Vue, etc.). It's not tied to the DOM, so I even did a POC of node.js rendering that would work in the CLI (but it doesn't work anymore as we changed the core and I didn't update the lib).
• core has been tested a lot. It was not 100% implemented in TDD, but most of it was! Also, most tests focus on the final output, so it's quite flexible for refactoring.
• We have visual regression tests for free thanks to Storybook & Chromatic QA. This + unit tests of the core means we are really confident we don't break things when we do changes and the PR checks are all green 👌
• The dev environment should be quite easy to set up. I tried as much as possible to keep things simple, so you can just run few commands and it works.

On the lowlights that could be improved:

• The internal design of the core mimics a lot what was done in v1. I don't think the current model is the best. It might be a lot of work to change that. But thanks to tests, it's still quite doable IMO.
• Some unit tests can be a bit complex to read, because of the "visual" nature of the lib. A lot of things are about {x,y} positions, so it's not always easy to visualize what it should be.
• The separation of "core" and the rendering libs is not perfect. Some code is duplicated among the different rendering libs and should be pulled back in core IMO.
• Because we want almost everything to be configurable, it adds a lot of complexity at different level of the lib (e.g. styles in templates that you can override at different levels, in the different methods).

Regarding what would be great to tackle next

First, we could go through the current list of open bugs & questions, to help people.

Then, we should do a better work at documenting the usage of the library. I quickly tried to make a nice website based on slides, but I'm not happy with the final result. People need a good documentation. v1 documentation was not complete (far from it), but it was better. I think this is one of the most important things to fix. Related issues are #274 #275 and #278.

Concretely for the next steps @lorarjohns 😉

1. I'm adding you to the list of Gitgraph.js collaborators
2. You should be able to clone the repo, install dependencies, run the tests locally, etc. Let me know if you have troubles with it.
3. I suggest you pick any issue you'd like to work on. Just try to keep a small scope at first. Then, try to fix it. Ask me anything if you need help / support / thinking about the approach. The idea is for you to get familiar with the codebase so you can be autonomous. You can also open a draft PR with your changes. I'll do my best to give you answers asap so you can become productive on your own.

Most of all, don't worry to take decisions. It's open-source, so very open to changes and improvements.

I'm mostly here to help understand the decisions that were taken and the strategy that was behind. But it should serve your needs (and the one of the community).

Hopefully, the library will be even more helpful to everyone.
Thank you!

[mikstur]

@nicoespeon congrats on becoming a dad!

I just recently came across this library as I am looking to implement some visualizations that look similar to git branches. I am also primarily working with angular.

Therefore, I might be able to contribute some changes to this repository as well, specifically perhaps an angular wrapper/implementation. Can you please add me as a contributor?

[jd-porter]

@nicoespeon are you still looking for contributors? I've been using gitgraph off and on for a year & just saw this pinned issue. I'd love to help out.

[nicoespeon]

@mikstur & @jd-porter sure. Sorry for my late reply, I've been off for the past week. Adding you both quickly right now 👍

So technically you'll be 4. Thank you for that!

Also, if you finally can't help maintaining the library just let me know, that's fine! I'll check in a few months as I wouldn't like to have a list of 10 contributors with no-one actually contributing 😉

[deanrad]

The slides and storybook are so, so awesome, and i would be proud to maintain this (and think all the stories you have would make it really relatively easy). That said - I'm a dad of 2 so I'll look for mentions but can't promise anything right now!

[S1ngS1ng]

@nicoespeon If you are still looking for maintainers, count me in as well.
Yesterday, I found an issue that I thought I could work on. I made changes today and already opened a PR.
If there is any other bug/enhancement that I can get started with, please do let me know. Thanks

[erickhagstrom]

Congratulations @nicoespeon! I'm a dad of 9, so yeah, I get it. The first one is the hardest. Until the second one comes along. :-)

I have a lot of irons in the fire so can't commit to anything just yet, but I like what I'm seeing here and will use it extensively, I'm sure. We'll see if I can make this more than just an occasional fling.

[nicoespeon]

Thank you @S1ngS1ng and @erickhagstrom 👍

It has been quite some time since I touched this repo. I give it a look from time to time but I don't have much time to do more than answer a few questions and review PRs (thanks there are automated tests!).

Help will be welcomed 😉