Gource
This time of year is one for reflection on what has been. Two of those reflections for me has been the work I’ve put into Adaptable for Moodle and the other being the impact of the change to a ‘public’ structure. To visualise these reflections I remembered about a piece of software called ‘Gourse’ that I first described in ‘Human or machine’.
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Creation
‘Gourse’ reads in the log of the changes that have been made to the code area that you provide. It depicts the changes to the files / structure as they happen. The starting point appears to be nothing rather than the entire structure as it stands. Therefore as the initial changes happen the structure becomes apparent. In both cases the source is the ‘main’ branch such that multiple releases can be shown with the full extent of the development between them.
I’ve chosen to depict between the 6th December 2024 and the 5th December 2025, being today as I type this. As YouTube supports 4k now, I’ve decided to try it out. I don’t have any 4k displays, so please let me know if you do and what you think? In addition I’ve added music from the YouTube audio library to bring an added dimension to the viewing experience.
Creation of the videos was done on Ubuntu then converted on Windows to ‘mp4’ with FFMpeg, additionally adding the music.
Adaptable
Music ‘Meeting Again’ by ‘Emily A. Sprague’ from the YouTube audio library.
Moodle
Music ‘Space Walker’ by ‘Au.Ra’ from the YouTube audio library.
What I find really interesting is the impact of ‘public’ around the 14th July. How it is such a fundamental structural change. A big bang in the Moodle universe.
Of course I couldn’t not resist creating a version that depicts the whole timeline as available in the Git repository:
Being between the 22nd November 2001 and 5th December 2024, or around 24 years in 4 minutes and 45 seconds. Music ‘Get Back Up’ by ‘Silent Partner’ from the YouTube audio library.
Thoughts
Overall you can visualise the effort that has gone in over the time period. Yet at the same time the videos are quite short and makes you think ‘Is that it? All that hard work explained in just a few short moments’.
Your thoughts please.
- Gource – 16th December 2025
- Dynamic lines – 16th November 2025
- Qwerty – 16th October 2025
