I was installing SVN on my work PC when I noticed that CollabNet had a video of their SVN submission history. The video demonstrated a moving timeline with a developer’s name surrounded by the files they commit in a sort of firework display. The project called code_swarm (http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/) is a Java project that parses out source control server history and creates these displays in a processed window. After trying the program out I thought that it would be a fantastic tool to encourage developers to commit small and commit often to “see their name in lights”. As an Agile Programming lover, the concept of continuous integration immediately came to mind and I know that this is a hard concept to get developers to buy into.
I was so impressed with this project that I decided to join it to contribute any way that I can. Everyone should take a look at the Subversion, Apache, and Eclipse codeswarm videos….really nifty.
Tim Pinet's Blog 