Arborspecimen trees of public repositories

Grown from git history

Arbor

Name a repository on GitHub and watch it grow, commit by commit, as an engraved tree: every file a leaf, every directory a branch, the packages it names for roots.

Repositories with 5 000 stars or more grow for anyone; smaller ones need a Graphide sign-in. A tree takes a few minutes, and the first visitor to ask grows it for everyone.

Fig. 1.Arbor Gopheri, Gopheria golangensis, from golang/go.

How a plate is read

after the plate’s own figures

Fig. 2.A leaf, which is one file.
Fig. 3.The bole cut through: every fork is as thick as its branches.
Fig. 4.Roots, which are the packages its lockfiles name.
Fig. 5.A fruit, entire and cut through: one entry point, where a program starts.
Fig. 6.A landmark, ringed and tied to the branch it changed.

Each film replays a repository’s default branch from its first commits to today and draws the tree at 720 of them, spaced by commit, not by calendar, so a busy month takes more of the film than a quiet year. A new file moves only what it touches; the rest of the engraving holds still, and a limb swells rather than appears.

The landmarks are found in the history, not kept by hand: a commit that moves much of the tree at once, a limb that sprouts, a limb that falls. Each is told in its commit’s own words and stays listed at the foot of the plate. Every crown ends the same size, so trees are not to scale with one another; the colophon gives the counts.

Herbarium