Git Graph Libre for Visual Studio Code

Visual git history, branch actions, and devcontainer support. A copyleft fork continuing Git Graph's MIT lineage.

Features

• Graph view: See branches, tags, and uncommitted changes in one graph
• History recovery: Keep detached HEAD visible and optionally discover unreachable commits
• Commit details: Click a commit to see message, files, and diffs
• Branch actions: Create, checkout, rename, delete, and merge
• Tag actions: Create, push, view details, and delete locally or on selected remotes; signed tags are marked with a verified badge in the graph
  • Tag types: lightweight tags are a plain ref with no tag object, so they are unsigned by definition and carry no message; annotated tags follow your git signing configuration (tag.gpgSign, user.signingkey, gpg.format) and may have an optional message
• Commit actions: Checkout, cherry-pick, revert, and reset
• Avatar support: Optional avatars from GitHub, GitLab, or Gravatar
• Multi-repo: Work with multiple repositories and declared Git submodules in one workspace; reload the extension after changing .gitmodules
• Devcontainer ready: Works in remote and container environments
• Internationalization: English, Dutch, Polish, zh-CN, and zh-TW

Why this fork

The original Git Graph by mhutchie left the MIT license in May 2019 — everything after commit 4af8583 is under more restrictive terms. This fork descends from that last MIT commit via asispts/neo-git-graph and adds devcontainer support, internationalization, and a modernized codebase and toolchain.

From version 1.0.0 the project is licensed under the GNU AGPL-3.0-or-later. Copyleft guarantees this fork stays open: anyone may redistribute or build on it, but every distributed or network-hosted derivative must keep its complete source available under the same terms. See docs/LICENSING.md for the full licensing strategy and provenance.

Installation

Marketplace listings are coming soon — this fork has not been published yet. Once it is, it will be available from:

• VS Code Marketplace: link to follow after publication

Until then, you can build and install it locally: pnpm install, package the bundled extension with pnpm exec vsce package --no-dependencies, then in VS Code run Extensions: Install from VSIX....

Configuration

All settings use the git-graph-libre prefix.

Setting	Default	Description
autoCenterCommitDetailsView	true	Center commit details when opened
dateFormat	"Date & Time"	"Date & Time", "Date Only", or "Relative"
dateType	"Author Date"	"Author Date" or "Commit Date"
dialog.merge.noFastForward	true	Pre-check "no fast-forward" in merge dialogs
dialog.pullBranch.noFastForward	false	Pre-check "no fast-forward" in the pull dialog
fetchAvatars	false	Fetch avatars (sends email to external services)
graphColors	12 defaults	Colors for graph lines
graphStyle	"rounded"	"rounded" or "angular"
initialLoadCommits	300	Commits to load on open
loadMoreCommits	100	Commits to load on demand
maxDepthOfRepoSearch	0	Folder depth for repo search
repository.boldCheckedOutCommit	false	Bold the checked-out commit's message
repository.fetchTagsByDefault	true	Pre-check "Fetch all tags" in the Fetch dialog
repository.includeReflog	false	Include commits referenced only by reflogs
repository.includeUnreachableCommits	false	Scan for unreachable commits in Show All
repository.muteMergeCommits	false	Mute merge commit messages (opt-in)
showCurrentBranchByDefault	false	Show only current branch on open
showStatusBarItem	true	Show status bar button
showUncommittedChanges	true	Show uncommitted changes node
telemetry.enabled	"unset"	unset / enabled / disabled — see below
tabIconColorTheme	"color"	"color" or "grey"

Telemetry

This extension can send anonymous usage data so development can be aimed at the features people actually use. It asks first and sends nothing until you answer. It is a hobby project with no company behind it, and the data goes to a small self-hosted service at t.plohnensoftware.download — never to a third-party analytics provider.

What is sent

• Which command or action ran (for example pushTag), and whether it succeeded.
• Once per session: whether a feature that works by showing something was actually in effect — recovered history (reflog-only or unreachable commits) appearing in the graph, a signed tag being there to badge, a discovered Git submodule appearing in the repository dropdown, or the graph actually being opened on one. These are recorded once, not once per refresh, and each is a yes/no about the feature: the repository paths behind the submodule answers are compared inside the extension and never leave it, so nothing is sent about which repositories or submodules you have.
• Once per session: the language Visual Studio Code is running in and which of this extension's translations served you — so missing translations can be spotted, since a mismatch between the two is a request nobody has answered.
• Once per session: which settings you have changed from their defaults — only that they were changed, never what you changed them to.
• The properties Visual Studio Code attaches to every extension telemetry event: extension and VS Code version, product (Code, Insiders, VSCodium, Cursor), whether this is a new installation, and anonymized machine, session, and device identifiers generated by VS Code itself.
• Your operating system, processor architecture, and the numeric part of your OS version (linux / x64 / 7.2.2, with any build or distribution suffix stripped). Visual Studio Code does not attach these itself, so the extension adds them.

What is never sent

File names, file paths, workspace or folder names, repository names, git remote URLs, branch names, tag names, commit hashes, commit messages, author names, email addresses, environment variables, credentials, or your list of installed extensions.

What the receiving service stores

The list above is also the complete list of what is kept. The service at t.plohnensoftware.download is a small self-hosted ingest — two containers, one table, no dashboard, no third party — and it writes that payload plus a timestamp of its own. It adds nothing else about you:

• No IP address. It is never read, never logged, and never hashed, and there is no column it could be stored in. Avoiding the automatic IP geolocation that hosted analytics products apply was the main reason to self-host at all, so no country, region, city, or network operator is attached to anything you send.
• No request headers, user agent, cookies, or referrer. Nothing outside the JSON body is read. The endpoint has no login and no session, so there is not even a token that could tie two of your requests together.
• No access log. The server logs startup, shutdown, and database failures. It never logs a request body, an address, or a property value.
• No names, email addresses, or accounts. Nothing in the system has a user account for one to belong to.
• Nothing joinable to another dataset. No install token, no license key, no cross-service identifier. A copy of the database, on its own, joins to nothing.

The closest thing to an identifier is the anonymized machine id Visual Studio Code generates. It is what makes how many installations use a feature answerable rather than just how many clicks happened, and actions are grouped by it when reading the data. It is not derived from your hardware, your hostname, or your user name; it is shared across all your extensions rather than specific to this one; and it resets if you reinstall your operating system. With no IP address and no log stored beside it, there is no second field to work back through to a person.

The server is open source, and its schema is the full list of what it is even able to store: git-graph-libre-telemetry-server.

Important

Even though I believe this data could help me to allocate my time better and I find it useful,I prioritize users so please only accept telemetry if you feel comfortable with it. This is also a reason why extention requests your action to take a educated decision about it.

Nothing is sent until you say so

git-graph-libre.telemetry.enabled has three states and starts at unset:

State	What happens
unset	Nothing is sent. The default — no answer is not a yes.
enabled	Feature-usage data is sent, subject to the switch below
disabled	Nothing is sent.

The extension asks once when it activates, and again whenever you open the graph, until you answer. Closing the notification without choosing is not an answer: the state stays unset and nothing is sent.

While the question is open the graph is not shown — you get a screen saying what is being waited for, with a Set now button that brings the notification back if you dismissed it. Answer it either way and the graph opens; disabled is a complete answer and costs you nothing.

Visual Studio Code's own telemetry.telemetryLevel setting always wins on top of that: while it is off, nothing is sent no matter which state the setting above is in. If you accept while that switch is off, the extension says so and offers to open the setting rather than storing a preference that cannot take effect.

Run code --telemetry to see the full declaration of what this extension collects, alongside every other extension you have installed.

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later) — see LICENSE. This fork incorporates MIT-licensed material from the original Git Graph lineage; the required MIT notices and per-era contributor rosters are preserved in LICENSE.mit and credited in NOTICE.md.

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the original Git Graph project or its maintainer.