Draw on your GitHub Public Contributions chart

Why

Skilled, active developers don't always contribute to Public repos only.
Yet future employers may judge you by your public contributions chart.
To correct this wrong, hack your chart!

Demo

How

• (or skip to TL;DR below).

• On Github:

  • Make a new public repo pch-chart. Don't generate any files.
  • Perhaps explain in description: 'Because my main work is in private repos!'

• On your computer:

  • Create an empty folder pch-chart.
  • Go there and add this repo's scripts patternToDates.js and datesToCommits.sh.
  • Make a textfile that defines what to draw on your chart,
    e.g. use pattern-duck.txt.
    It's a matrix where each character corresponds to the light/dark-green intensity you
    want to add to a day's tile in the chart. (We'll generate X commits for these days).
    The file should have 7 lines (one per weekday, Sunday on line 1 as on GitHub),
    that should all have equal length. Just append spaces if needed.
    Use matrix values:
    • 0 or space: remain gray,
    • 1: light-green,
    • 2: greener,
    • etc.; A to Z correspond to 10-35, and a-x to 36-59.
  • Note:
    • We only increase a tile's intensity, so if a tile wasn't grey before, it'll be more green.
    • Intensity can become lighter if days with many commits were already on the chart.
      Compensate with different values in the pattern file, e.g. try 4->A, 3->5, etc.
    • I had to experiment a bit to find out when GitHub would switch to faint-green tiles,
      instead of showing medium shades of green only. I found that my chart needed a pattern
      with at least one day of 10 contributions, one of 4, and perhaps several of 3.
  • Use NodeJS to generate a file with corresponding datetimes, e.g.:
    $ node patternToDates.js pattern-duck.txt
    This will place the drawing rightmost, with its bottom-right tile on the latest Saturday.
    If you want to draw starting at a certain Sunday, with its top-left tile there, use like:
    $ node patternToDates.js pattern-duck.txt "11 Jan 2015".
    This will generate a file dates.txt that contains e.g.:
    Oct 07 2014 12:01
Oct 07 2014 12:02
Oct 15 2014 12:01
    You can edit this file if you wish.
  • Prepare a local git repo:
    $ git init
  • Generate a commit for each of your datetimes:
    $ chmod +x datesToCommits.sh
$ ./datesToCommits.sh
  • Push these commits to your GitHub pch-chart repo:
    $ git remote add origin [email protected]:<YOUR_USERNAME_HERE>/pch-chart.git
$ git push -u origin master
  • Done!
  • ★ Star and share this repo :) ★
  • If you want to remove these commits from your chart (perhaps to draw new things):
    • On GitHub: delete your repo pch-chart.
    • On your computer: delete the hidden .git folder.

TL;DR: just fill my chart with ducks!

• Make a GitHub repo pch-chart.

• Run in local shell:
  mkdir pch-chart
cd pch-chart
curl -o pattern-ducks.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stcruy/public-contrib-hack/master/pattern-ducks.txt
curl -o patternToDates.js https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stcruy/public-contrib-hack/master/patternToDates.js
curl -o datesToCommits.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stcruy/public-contrib-hack/master/datesToCommits.sh
chmod +x datesToCommits.sh

git init
git remote add origin [email protected]:<YOUR_USERNAME_HERE>/pch-chart.git
node patternToDates.js pattern-ducks.txt
./datesToCommits.sh
git push -u origin master

• To queue a duck that will slide in view during the upcoming weeks, add:
  curl -o pattern-duck.txt https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stcruy/public-contrib-hack/master/pattern-duck.txt
node patternToDates.js pattern-duck.txt "<FIRST_SUNDAY_AFTER_MOST_RECENT_SATURDAY_HERE__example:>15 Mar 2015"
./datesToCommits.sh
git push -u origin master

License

CC BY-NC-SA

Credits

Inspired by adamschwartz's hack.

Made by Steven Vercruysse while in Norway.