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Octotree: the missing GitHub tree view (Chrome extension)

362 points| yblu | 12 years ago |chrome.google.com | reply

106 comments

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[+] yblu|12 years ago|reply
I built this to scratch my own itch, as somebody who frequently reads GitHub code and feels annoyed having to click countless of links to navigate through a large project. Hope it is useful for other people too.
[+] toyg|12 years ago|reply
Mad props. Any chance of a Safari port? Its extension system is not very different from Chrome's. EDIT: and you shouldn't be shy to plug your gittip page: https://www.gittip.com/buunguyen/
[+] ushi|12 years ago|reply
OMG thank you! I have so many cloned repos somewhere on my disk, just to browse the code. Now it's time to implement super-fast-github-git-grep.js --- my productivity will explode.
[+] teh_klev|12 years ago|reply
And very well scratched sir. I enjoy flitting about github repo's and it's a pain to have to pull every repo I want to have a gander at.
[+] Xeoncross|12 years ago|reply
This will save countless electrons that might otherwise have been displaced while opening many new tabs to view the source files.
[+] ivanca|12 years ago|reply
You are super awesome, I'm poor but somebody should throw money at you.
[+] jburwell|12 years ago|reply
To me, the lack a fast tree browser has been one of the biggest weakness of the Github interface. This plugin solves that problem exceeding well. Github should hire the author, and officially fund his efforts to make it a first class feature that does not require a plugin.
[+] rplnt|12 years ago|reply
Honest question: What is this good for? I guess I don't use github (or any other visual vcs) enough.. but I really can't see any point in browsing file structure of the repo in a web browser.
[+] mck-|12 years ago|reply
protip: you can press 't' when you're in the repo for Sublime-like search for files -- which I find more useful than a tree browser
[+] yclept|12 years ago|reply
do you know that you can press T on a repo page and get a nice fuzzy search? i find it much more efficient than clicking through a tree.
[+] bnj|12 years ago|reply
Wow, giving it a quick try I can't believe how fast it is. This is one of those things that I've always desperately needed, and I never knew until now.

Be sure to tweet it at some of the github engineers– Thy should bring this into their core product.

[+] ahmett|12 years ago|reply
Here's an idea: Automatically expand all the tree until there are more than 1 items in the level

e.g. src->com->twitter->scalding->scala->test (in this example, these are all folders in hierarchy and they are the only one until the 'test' so expanding them automatically all the way through makes sense).

[+] vdm|12 years ago|reply
That's a good idea, those 'fake' Java directories can be displayed collapsed inline as a single node of the hierarchy, thus saving all their indent space.
[+] whizzkid|12 years ago|reply
Great work but i want to point out one small feature that Github has but not known to everyone.

Press 't' when you go to a repository, it will activate the file finder. From there you can just start typing for the file/folder name you want to see and it will filter the repo instantly.

I wonder why this feature is not popular yet.

[+] mateuszf|12 years ago|reply
Because you have to know the name of the file you are looking for. It's good if you are looking at your own code base, but not for exploratory work.
[+] granttimmerman|12 years ago|reply
You can also press `t` on any repo on github to find files/filetypes quickly.
[+] yblu|12 years ago|reply
Find files is certainly useful for coding, not so much exploring. I would have no idea what to search for when exploring a new repo. Besides, even when coding with IDEs with find-files feature, I mostly navigate using the tree. Guess I like tree view :).
[+] aslakhellesoy|12 years ago|reply
I use 't' all the time to look up files as well.

I guess this extension makes it easier to get an overview of the directory structure, but that's something I rarely need.

I'm sceptical of browser plugins in general. There are so many browser plugins that change under the hood and do malicious things. It would be easy for the author of this plugin to scrape all your source code and phone it home.

[+] manish_gill|12 years ago|reply
Fantastic! You planning to add Bitbucket support? That would be really nice. :)
[+] chillericed|12 years ago|reply
+1 I'd also use bitbucket supported version of this
[+] ubercow|12 years ago|reply
I'd love to see a setting that makes the tree view collapsed by default. If I have some time later I might whip up a pull req.
[+] yblu|12 years ago|reply
The tree should already be collapsed by the default (or it's a bug). However, the extension remembers the selection state, so if you expand some folders, you will see them remained expanded the next time you visit the same repository. Is there any chance you talked about this scenario?
[+] jxf|12 years ago|reply
This is a fantastic extension! Browsing is fast and efficient, and creating the token for my private repos was painless.

A "search for files/folders named ..." feature would be a nice bonus, too, so that you can quickly get to the right spot in a big hierarchy.

To the author (https://twitter.com/buunguyen): please add a donation link somewhere so I can send you a thank-you (or you can just e-mail me with your PayPal/other address; my e-mail's in my profile).

[+] tomblomfield|12 years ago|reply
Adding a private token took a few seconds - just a little irritating. It links to a Readme, which then links to the page to get your token

Instead, why doesn't the plugin just link directly to the page which generates the token if it detects that the repo is private?

[+] glitchdout|12 years ago|reply
A "search for files/folders named ..." feature already exists on GitHub. Just press "t".
[+] xwowsersx|12 years ago|reply
This is great. It would be even better if you could resize the tree. Some projects have really deep trees and at a certain point you can't seem the names of the files.
[+] gknoy|12 years ago|reply
Is there an easy way to extend this so that it can also be used when accessing Enterprise Github installations, e.g. `github.mycompany.com`?
[+] yblu|12 years ago|reply
A couple of people have asked for this in comments (and someone reported it on GitHub as well). I don't have a deployment handy so it's hard to build out. I hope someone can submit a PR. (Or wait until I can get a deployment to build/test.)
[+] mrdmnd|12 years ago|reply
Did you get API rate limited, by any chance?
[+] dewey|12 years ago|reply
I'd love to see something like this being on the site by default. Maybe just a button next to the repository title where you'd be able to toggle between the current view and the tree view. Both of these options have their advantages for different use cases.

In the meantime that's a great solution. Thanks!

[+] spullara|12 years ago|reply
Press 't' and search the filenames in repo instantly. Very useful.
[+] mateuszf|12 years ago|reply
Useful, but you have to know exactly what you are looking for. It's not always the case.
[+] ntoshev|12 years ago|reply
I don't really find the tree view useful. But I wish there was a way to see the code weight by individual files and whole repos: as KLOCS, size, anything. Is there such an extension?