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

Gitg is a clone of Gitk and GitX for GNOME (it also works on KDE etc.) which shows a pretty colored graph.

It is actively developed (as of 2012). It lets you sort the commits (graph nodes) either chronologically or topologically, and hide commits that don't lead to a selected branch.

It works fine with large repositories and complex dependency graphs.

Sample screenshots, showing the linux-git and linux-2.6 repositories: