git-timelapse

What's git-timelapse?

git-timelapse is an npm package that constructs timelapses of how pages in your project have evolved over time.

The following gif illustrates a very simple example and is looping although this is not the default for the package.

Currently git-timelapse only works for basic web pages or simple react apps. I intend to expand it further to offer some sort of support for more complex applications but there's some issues I'd need to address such as changes to the projects back-end or database schema.

Usage

# install git-timelapse
npm i git-timelapse

# run it
npx git-timelapse -g ./full/path/to/git/repo -p ./full/path/to/page

Options

• -g /path/to/git/repo - Full Path to folder for the git repo.
• -p /path/to/page - Full Path To The Page Or URL i.e https://localhost:3000

Further Configuration

You can achieve further configuration by creating a timelapseConfig.js file with the following structure

module.exports = {
  #The delay between the slides in the generated gif in ms
  delay: 500,

  #Only include every 3rd commit in the timelapse
  skip: 3,

  #Do not include screenshots that are both sucessive and similiar in the final timelapse
  ditchSimiliar: true,

  #The name of the output file (It will still end with .git)
  outputFilename: "test",

  #The full hash of the earliest commit you want to include
  start: "0a79a4440e29aaa84e5cf7075a6eb1025b615261",

  #The full hash of the latest commit you want to include
  end: "fde000b6da818b47a6d2a8ccff0478a52a6492ab",

  #The width of the viewport when the screenshot is taken and width of the gif
  width: 1280,

  #The height of the viewport when the screenshot is taken and height of the gif
  height: 800

};

Projects with a build process

This is an example of how you would use this package with something like create-react-app

# install git-timelapse
npm i git-timelapse

# use npm start or whatever command you use to have your application listen to changes in your code
npm start

# In a sepearte terminal run git-timelapse (url example for create-react-app: http://localhost:3000)
npx git-timelapse -g ./full/path/to/git/repo -p url/to/page