tracking.html

---
title: Tracking Changes 
summary: Because nothing happens all at once. 
date: 2013-01-31 14:56:39
---
Inspired by [@jsvine's](https://twitter.com/jsvine) experiments in version-control at [drafts.jsvine.com](http://drafts.jsvine.com), I thought I'd expose some of the bones that tick beneath my [site](http://samjacoby.com/posts/2012/8/21/hello-world/). I run these pages through the [Hyde](http://hyde.github.com) static-site generator--[Jekyll's](https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll) underloved Pythonic-cousin--which despite being a little complex for the job, I like. 

I mostly use git as a glorified save button, not a collaborative tool (on this site at least)--so all I needed to do was expose my changesets (already online on [GitHub](http://https://github.com/samjacoby/samjacoby.com/)).

I slapped together a small plugin that parses the logs of the repo that backs the site, and renders them on the page per-file in a reasonably-digestible manner. It would've made more sense to be using mercurial (which is written in Python), but alas, GitHub is too damn good. 

At any rate, you'll now see a 'Change History' on the bottom of each page I've worked on--and if you're so inclined, can thumb-through my misspellings, fudged-dates, and all the rest. Tantalizing.

The plug-in, itself, is [here](https://github.com/samjacoby/hyde/commit/a92073bb46775499e1d510c2c71009ddd8101218) in a not-very-palatable form. Pretty minimal, but you get the idea. The syntax-highlighting is a smidgen of jQuery.