Carleton University - School of Computer Science Honours Project
Winter 2021
Gitucator: A Beginner-Friendly Git Visualization Tool
Fadel Chamseddine
SCS Honours Project Image
ABSTRACT
The importance of version control systems in software development environments has aided Git to become one of the most popular version control systems in the world, rendering a necessity for new developers to become proficient Git users. Existing Git-based tools tend to be overly complicated and overwhelming for beginners which renders the learning of Git as unnecessarily difficult. Gitucator is a tool developed with the aim of mitigating this problem through providing an easy to understand and intuitive user interface which not only increases the ease of conducting Git commands, but also promotes the learning of what each operation does and when each command is required. Gitucator achieves this through providing simple and clear user-interface windows as well as a visual representation of Git branch structure so as to clearly indicate the status of each branch component relative to the remaining components. This beginner-friendly visualization provides the user only with the information that they need to know and hides unnecessary details under the hood which allows us to conclude that indeed, learning Git should not be as hard or intimidating to beginners as it actually is.