TY  - JOUR
U1  - Zeitschriftenartikel, wissenschaftlich - begutachtet (reviewed)
A1  - Oberhauser, Roy
T1  - VR-GitCity
BT  - Immersively Visualizing Git Repository Evolution Using a City Metaphor in Virtual Reality
JF  - International Journal on Advances in Software
N2  - The increasing demand for software functionality necessitates an increasing amount of program source code that is retained and managed in version control systems, such as Git. As the number, size, and complexity of Git repositories increases, so does the number of collaborating developers, maintainers, and other stakeholders over a repository’s lifetime. In particular, visual limitations of command line or two- dimensional graphical Git tooling can hamper repository comprehension, analysis, and collaboration across one or multiple repositories when a larger stakeholder spectrum is involved. This is especially true for depicting repository evolution over time. This paper contributes VR-GitCity, a Virtual Reality (VR) solution concept for visualizing and interacting with Git repositories in VR. The evolution of the code base is depicted via a 3D treemap utilizing a city metaphor, while the commit history is visualized as vertical planes. Our prototype realization shows its feasibility, and our evaluation results based on a case study show its depiction, comprehension, analysis, and collaboration capabilities for evolution, branch, commit, and multi-repository analysis scenarios.
KW  - Git
KW  - virtual reality
KW  - visualization
KW  - version control systems
KW  - software configuration management
Y1  - 2023
U6  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:944-opus4-32562
UN  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:944-opus4-32562
UR  - http://www.iariajournals.org/software/tocv16n34.html
VL  - 16
IS  - 3 & 4
SP  - 141
EP  - 150
S1  - 10
ER  -