It is often difficult to tell how hard developers are working to non-IT folks. Usually, I try to let them watch Gource.

Setting up Gource on Mac is not difficult, but it has several steps. First, you have to have Brew installed. Then, run the commands below from Terminal,

{% codeblock lang

install wget if you don’t have

brew install wget

gsource dependency

brew install glew brew install pkg-config brew install sdl2 brew install sdl2_image brew install boost brew install glm brew install pcre

download and build Gource

wget https://github.com/acaudwell/Gource/releases/download/gource-0.47/gource-0.47.tar.gz tar vfxz gource-0.47.tar.gz cd gource-0.47 ./configure

assume no error from configure

make install {% endcodeblock %}

The binary will install into /usr/local/bin/gource. Run the command below to generate the video from a directory with a Git repository {% codeblock lang

You can replace the default icon with yours by renaming your avatar to the Git author name such as “Your Name.png” as in the Git log, place it in the local directory, and run the Gource command below {% codeblock lang

If you feel the video is too long, you can adjust the speed by changing the simulation time scale (default: 1.0) with -c, --time-scale, or SCALE.

You can make your video less messy by reducing the maximum number of files from unlimited to a value such as 100 with --max-files NUMBER

Adding elasticity is fun with -e 0.5 when a large number of files are being added or deleted.

More information can be found in Controls

The video can be output to a file with the option -o FILENAME. The file size can be over 10GB for a 1-minute video, so beware.

After the video is generated, you can use libav to convert it to MP4, {% codeblock lang