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Show HN: Find maintained forks of your favorite GitHub repos

87 points by punnerud 9y ago

thegeomaster 9y ago
When I enter a repository that has been renamed (e.g. docker/docker or tomaka/glium), I get: "Woops, that developer can't code...". Why so?
owebmaster 9y ago
Thanks man, this is something github really doesn't do well. Your contribution may help a lot of projects :)
Ajedi32 9y ago
I've been using this extension for a while now which shows similar information inline with the page: https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks Makes it pretty easy to see at a glance when a project has another fork which is better maintained.
no_protocol 9y ago
What makes this a fit for Show HN today? This site has been around for a while. Did you make some updates to it or something? From the Show HN rules [1]: > New features and upgrades ("Foo 1.3.1 is out") generally aren't substantive enough to be Show HNs. A major overhaul is probably ok. I haven't figured out what the new changes are, if any. Are you the same as user yann_ck who originally posted this, or just working with him on it? [2] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6739269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6739269
elliotpage 9y ago
This is cool, but one thing that may be useful is a "last commit" instead of "Last Update". Explaining what is looked at for "last update" that would be great too. Some repos that I follow that are very dead have a very recent "last update" as they are still hammered by people due to being high up in search engine results and linked to from lots of places.
- onli 9y ago
  Case in point is http://forked.yannick.io/flot/flot http://forked.yannick.io/flot/flot and https://github.com/flot/flot https://github.com/flot/flot. Dead project with seemingly no active forks, listed being updated 2 month ago. Last commit was in 2014.
- fyskij 9y ago
  I think that the most important missing feature is number of commits of the fork
  - masukomi 9y ago
    number of commits on the fork is irrelevant to the stated coal "find MAINTAINED forks..." if you had 400 extra commits, but they were 6 years ago i don't care. it's very unlikely to be a "maintained" fork.
    - davidw 9y ago
      What you'd want is consistency over time together with the most recent commit.
davidw 9y ago
That's pretty cool. A full-fledged open source project is really about people and communication and sharing ideas, not just pressing a 'fork' button. You need a mailing list, and maybe some kind of chat thing (IRC) as well as what github offers. I wish github would make it easier to have some kind of "leader election" or something to point out which one is the actual project. I hate it when I find some project with 192030 forks and 0 coordination of them, it always feels like such a wasted opportunity.
glup 9y ago
Whoops reading HN without my glasses again— saw "Find marinated forks of your favorite GH repos."
megamindbrian 9y ago
karma-runner/karma is still the top result. Doesn't help.
Siecje 9y ago
On Bitbucket a fork of a Mercurial repo is non publishing by default. It would be neat to see all of the publishing forks which are basically trying to be "maintained forks".
smnscu 9y ago
Really cool. If you have popular projects it's great to see what the community is doing with them. http://forked.yannick.io/andreis/interview http://forked.yannick.io/andreis/interview
dang 9y ago
A user emailed us to complain about this title saying "Show HN" when it isn't the submitter's work. That's an abuse of "Show HN", which is intended to share work that you yourself have made. Please (re-)read the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
- punnerud 9y ago
  I'm sorry. I thought the "Show HN" was for projects people could try out. Will not use it for something I have not made again.
  - dang 9y ago
    Thanks!

87 points by punnerud 9y ago

When I enter a repository that has been renamed (e.g. docker/docker or tomaka/glium), I get: "Woops, that developer can't code...". Why so?

owebmaster 9y ago

Thanks man, this is something github really doesn't do well. Your contribution may help a lot of projects :)

Ajedi32 9y ago

I've been using this extension for a while now which shows similar information inline with the page: https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks Makes it pretty easy to see at a glance when a project has another fork which is better maintained.

no_protocol 9y ago

What makes this a fit for Show HN today? This site has been around for a while. Did you make some updates to it or something? From the Show HN rules [1]: > New features and upgrades ("Foo 1.3.1 is out") generally aren't substantive enough to be Show HNs. A major overhaul is probably ok. I haven't figured out what the new changes are, if any. Are you the same as user yann_ck who originally posted this, or just working with him on it? [2] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6739269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6739269

elliotpage 9y ago

This is cool, but one thing that may be useful is a "last commit" instead of "Last Update". Explaining what is looked at for "last update" that would be great too. Some repos that I follow that are very dead have a very recent "last update" as they are still hammered by people due to being high up in search engine results and linked to from lots of places.

onli 9y ago
Case in point is http://forked.yannick.io/flot/flot http://forked.yannick.io/flot/flot and https://github.com/flot/flot https://github.com/flot/flot. Dead project with seemingly no active forks, listed being updated 2 month ago. Last commit was in 2014.
fyskij 9y ago
I think that the most important missing feature is number of commits of the fork
- masukomi 9y ago
  number of commits on the fork is irrelevant to the stated coal "find MAINTAINED forks..." if you had 400 extra commits, but they were 6 years ago i don't care. it's very unlikely to be a "maintained" fork.
  - davidw 9y ago
    What you'd want is consistency over time together with the most recent commit.

davidw 9y ago

That's pretty cool. A full-fledged open source project is really about people and communication and sharing ideas, not just pressing a 'fork' button. You need a mailing list, and maybe some kind of chat thing (IRC) as well as what github offers. I wish github would make it easier to have some kind of "leader election" or something to point out which one is the actual project. I hate it when I find some project with 192030 forks and 0 coordination of them, it always feels like such a wasted opportunity.

glup 9y ago

Whoops reading HN without my glasses again— saw "Find marinated forks of your favorite GH repos."

megamindbrian 9y ago

karma-runner/karma is still the top result. Doesn't help.

Siecje 9y ago

On Bitbucket a fork of a Mercurial repo is non publishing by default. It would be neat to see all of the publishing forks which are basically trying to be "maintained forks".

smnscu 9y ago

Really cool. If you have popular projects it's great to see what the community is doing with them. http://forked.yannick.io/andreis/interview http://forked.yannick.io/andreis/interview

dang 9y ago

A user emailed us to complain about this title saying "Show HN" when it isn't the submitter's work. That's an abuse of "Show HN", which is intended to share work that you yourself have made. Please (re-)read the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

punnerud 9y ago
I'm sorry. I thought the "Show HN" was for projects people could try out. Will not use it for something I have not made again.
- dang 9y ago
  Thanks!