Chronicler: Interactive Exploration of Source Code History
summary
Proposes a history graph built from simplified syntax trees and a one-dimensional Tree Flow visualization that links to a code view; prototypes combine this graph with a timeline (the full Chronicler tool), a timeline with viewport stability, and a plain timeline. Uses bag-of-words node matching, supports selecting and copy/paste from past versions, and scales to large files with abstraction. A 21-developer study (8 navigation tasks) shows viewport stability speeds search and developers strongly prefer Chronicler for exploring structural changes.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:30Questions About Code History
- 1:09The History Graph
- 2:29Viewport Stabiization
- 2:55Propagation
- 4:19Tree Flow Visualization
- 5:50Chronicler Prototype
- 6:48Chronicler Interaction Abstraction
- 7:15Chronicler Interaction Filtering
- 8:53Navigation Strategies
- 12:07Performance for Local Undo Results
- 13:04Own Code Discussion
- 15:27Summary
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