Pretty git branch graphs

Question

I\'ve seen some books and articles have some really pretty looking graphs of git branches and commits. How can I make high-quality printable images of git history?

Answer 1

Built on top of TikZ & PGF, gitdags is a little LaTeX package that allows you to effortlessly produce vector-graphics commit graphs, and more.

Automatic generation of an existing repository's commit graph is not the purpose of gitdags; the graphs it produces are only meant for educational purposes.

I often use it to produce graphs for my answers to Git questions, as an alternative to ASCII commit graphs:

• How can I do a bugfix on master and integrate it into my less stable branch(es)?
• How does git commit --amend work, exactly?
• Why does Git tell me "Not currently on any branch" after I run "git checkout origin/"?
• What is the difference between merging master into branch and merging branch into master?
• Git rebase --preserve-merges fails

Here is an example of such a graph demonstrating the effects of a simple rebase:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{gitdags}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}
  \begin{subfigure}[b]{\textwidth}
    \centering
    \begin{tikzpicture}
      % Commit DAG
      \gitDAG[grow right sep = 2em]{
        A -- B -- { 
          C,
          D -- E,
        }
      };
      % Tag reference
      \gittag
        [v0p1]       % node name
        {v0.1}       % node text
        {above=of A} % node placement
        {A}          % target
      % Remote branch
      \gitremotebranch
        [origmaster]    % node name
        {origin/master} % node text
        {above=of C}    % node placement
        {C}             % target
      % Branch
      \gitbranch
        {master}     % node name and text 
        {above=of E} % node placement
        {E}          % target
      % HEAD reference
      \gitHEAD
        {above=of master} % node placement
        {master}          % target
    \end{tikzpicture}
    \subcaption{Before\ldots}
  \end{subfigure}

  \begin{subfigure}[b]{\textwidth}
    \centering
    \begin{tikzpicture}
      \gitDAG[grow right sep = 2em]{
        A -- B -- { 
          C -- D' -- E',
          {[nodes=unreachable] D -- E },
        }
      };
      % Tag reference
      \gittag
        [v0p1]       % node name
        {v0.1}       % node text
        {above=of A} % node placement
        {A}          % target
      % Remote branch
      \gitremotebranch
        [origmaster]    % node name
        {origin/master} % node text
        {above=of C}    % node placement
        {C}             % target
      % Branch
      \gitbranch
        {master}      % node name and text 
        {above=of E'} % node placement
        {E'}          % target
      % HEAD reference
      \gitHEAD
        {above=of master} % node placement
        {master}          % target
    \end{tikzpicture}
    \subcaption{\ldots{} and after \texttt{git rebase origin/master}}
  \end{subfigure}
  \caption{Demonstrating a typical \texttt{rebase}}
\end{figure}

\end{document}