| [X-post from the previous Idea Sunday thread that didn't make it to the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616132] Idea: Git-story, a website that generates summary narratives from git commit histories and other github data. Here's a brain-dump with some ideas for the specifics: Use foreshadowing: "It all started with one person, X, spending months to gradually build what would one day become Y, a project forked by hundreds and starred by thousands." When someone makes their first contribution to a project give them a brief introduction, like a shorter version of http://osrc.dfm.io/ Use sentiment analysis on commit messages to say things like "Frustrations mount as...", "the developers rejoice after..." When people work on multiple concurrent branches use use phrases like: Meanwhile, X and Y toil away on the new Z feature. Use the time between commits to chunk them into single sentences/paragraphs. Also, add comments if the project goes dormant, or if there is a spike in development. Use keywords in commit messages like merge, revert, resolve to generate events in the story. When bugs are resolved look for linked issues and use the age of the bug and number of comments to say thinks like "X finally fixed the controversial Y bug" |
Include a decent plugin architecture, and you could get lots of contributions to add in data from everyone's pet CI system, bugtracker, download counter, etc.
[actually, if you started with something like Rails, you could launch versions from old code, take screenshots, and stitch together a video]