git-shining: Transform the GitHub contributor graph into living art

This program turns your contributor graph into a work of art by filing commits with the right dates. GitHub will automatically scan the repository and fill out the graph for you.

Constraints

Best to create or use a burner account for this; this is not for your main account.

• Your account must be at least a year old
• You must have no other activity for the year, which includes pull requests, issue comments, etc.
• You must only have one repository recording commits for the year, and it must be all commits related to your message.

Usage

The first step is to generate configuration. You can do this in two ways:

git-shining generate-config <json|txt>

This will generate a blank canvas for editing in JSON or TXT (more on this later) format.

or

git-shining render-font <.otf or .ttf file> <message (be sure to quote)>

This will generate a pre-filled configuration with the message rasterized to the canvas in the font provided.

Then, you can generate a repository with the generate-repository command. Be sure to at least set the email field of the person you want getting credit for the commits, it must map directly to a configured GitHub email:

git-shining generate-repository -i bro.txt -e wearelegion@example.org -m "Sup Bro" /tmp/test.git

After that, you can create your repository and upload it.

Configuration Formats

There are two formats for configuration: JSON and TXT.

JSON is a JSON array of integers, from 0-10, which coordinate to shading in the graph (made possible by filing more commits for brighter shades). It is easy to consume, post-process, and generate, but a little hard to edit.

TXT is an easier format to hand-edit. It is simply a well-aligned grid of integers, which you can set from 0-A (A is 10 here) to affects shading.

The generate-config sub-command can generate both formats for hand-editing, and the render-font command has switches to modify target configuration output.

Troubleshooting

• If you upload twice, you must fully delete the old repository and re-create it. Force pushes will not clear the graph.
• There is no functionality (yet) to set the origin date, it just works off the current date.
• If you're wondering what your graph will look like before you push to GitHub, try the build sub-command which will generate a HTML mock of the graph you can load into your browser. You can hover over each square to get the expected date.

Future Plans

• Set origin date of commits
• Marquee and Mural functionality

Author

The Professional