VisualGit is an easy-to-use, visually-oriented desktop client for Git aimed at helping students learn the standard Git workflow.
Team MLT3
1. Installation
2. Setup
4. Development
5. Features
6. Contributing
8. Credits
9. Help
npm (Node Package Manager) is used to manage VisualGit's dependencies, therefore it is required to install and run VisualGit. Follow the installation instructions below:
sudo yum install npm
sudo apt-get install npm
If you have homebrew installed:
brew install npm
Otherwise download and install version 10.15.3 of Node.js. It comes with npm version 6.4.1. Upgrade this to npm 6.9.0 and install important global packages by running the commands below:
sudo npm install -g [email protected]
sudo npm install -g electron node-pre-gyp
Download and install the latest version 10.15.3 of Node.js. It comes with npm version 6.4.1. Upgrade this to npm 6.9.0 and install important global packages by running the commands below:
npm install -g [email protected]
npm install -g electron node-pre-gyp
Type "$PSHome" in a PowerShell window to get your PowerShell path. Add the PowerShell path to your PATH system environment variable.
then...
npm install windows-build-tools -g
Install npm and node
sudo apt install npm
sudo apt install nodejs-legacy
Upgrade node to 10.15.3 and npm to 6.9.0
sudo npm install -g n
sudo n 10.15.3
sudo npm install [email protected] -g
Install important global packages
sudo npm install -g electron node-pre-gyp --unsafe-perm=true --allow-root
sudo apt install libcurl4-gnutls-dev
change the permission and verify cache
sudo chmod +777 -R $HOME/
sudo npm cache verify
Please ensure that the path to your repository folder has no spaces in it before you clone to avoid errors.
Clone with either HTTPS or SSH:
git clone https://github.com/kblincoe/VisualGit_SE701_2019_2.git
git clone [email protected]:kblincoe/VisualGit_SE701_2019_2.git
then...
cd VisualGit_SE701_2019_2
npm install
Run the command below to start VisualGit.
npm start
You can log in to VisualGit using your GitHub credentials.
TypeScript is a statically-typed superset of JavaScript that compiles into JavaScript. Most of our source files are written in TypeScript (.ts files), therefore you will need to run a TypeScript compiler to compile the source code to JavaScript (.js files) as you make changes, e.g. typescript-compiler for Node.
Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) is a CSS preprocessor with some handy extra features. All of our Style Sheets are written in Sass (.scss files), which compile into CSS (.css files). Therefore, you will need to a run a Sass-compiler to compile your .scss files into .css files as you make changes, e.g. node-sass for Node.
Repositories can be added by two methods; either by cloning the remotely hosted repository or opening it from the local file system. This is achieved using the add repository button in the top left which will update the screen to the add repository view.
Cloning with SSH is recommended as there is not yet any method for entering user credentials in VisualGit. This means that if you clone using HTTPS, you will still be able to see local changes and commit locally but not push.
Currently, when you clone a repository, it is saved to a directory under ./VisualGit/. This means that when you open a repository which is saved locally, you can simply enter the name of the directory relative to the VisualGit directory. Other save locations are not currently supported but it is planned in future work.
When changes are made in a repository which is open, the interface will update by showing each file which has uncommitted changes. These changes will be displayed as a traffic light scheme:
- Green: Added file
- Orange: Modified file
- Red: Deleted file
This is used to allow users to see the different types of changes easily and once they click on the files, the file differences will be shown. The file differences are shown line by line with green lines representing added lines and red representing deleted lines. Any other parts of the file are unchanged.
The pulling and pushing currently works for changes which are made on master and origin/master by syncing these up. When the pull button is clicked, any changes on the remote repository will be added to the local repository and the graph will be updated. When pushing, the same process applies. The changes on master will be pushed to the remote repository.
Please read the contributing guidelines here.
- Tim chosen as leader to speak on behalf of the team if required at any point.
- Decided to be a self-managing team.
- Kanban Project Management methodology chosen because of its flexibility and suitability for the team.
- Decided to use GitHub project board with automation to visualise and manage work broken down into issues.
- Decided to remain in 1 large team as sub-teams would unnecessarily complicate management.
- Issues should have completion deadlines.
- 3 approvers required per issue.
- 1 code reviewer required per pull request.
- Round-robin selection of issue approvers and code reviewers.
- Decided that updating VisualGit to Angular7 would be the highest priority.
Before we could commence work on the project, the majority voted to switch from the restrictive and stress-inducing round robin selection of issue approvers and code reviewers to a more flexible option where everyone approves issues/performs code reviews in their own time, while giving everyone else a chance to meet the minimum contribution requirements via contribution tracking in this Google spreadsheet. If an urgent issue approval or code review is required, the team will be prompted so that someone who is available volunteers.
- To ensure that the codebase in master is functional across MacOS and Windows (the 2 OSs used by our team for development), everyone will aim to perform code reviews for pull requests where code is developed on an OS different to their own. Noting the development OS will be a requirement for a new pull request.
- Decided to hold a moratorium in the last 3 days before the assignment due date to ban any new features being added. The focus during this period will be bug fixes and general improvements.
- Decided that work estimates(hours) for new issues will now be recommended while completion deadlines for issues will be completely optional. If anyone wishes to add a completion deadline, they can do so after the issue is approved, once they've assigned themselves to it.
- Decided to break up the very large automated testing task into smaller manageable issues. However, before these sub-issues can be created and before anyone can start adding tests to their contributions, the testing setup and a single unit test should be working so that we can ensure that we are all using the same configuration as well as the same testing framework and library. In the meantime, everyone should include manual testing steps in their pull requests.
- Decided to cancel the code moratorium (with its accompanying restrictions) in favor of a final product with more functionality.
VisualGit was originally developed by Elliot Whiley and Harvey Rendell. For a summary of their project, refer to their cool poster. You can find their original repo here.
Visualgit utilises a range of libraries and frameworks, more information on them can be found below: