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https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks

💚 🍴 Show notable forks of GitHub repositories under their names.
https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks

addon chrome-extension firefox-addon firefox-extension forks forks-insight github github-forks stars

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💚 🍴 Show notable forks of GitHub repositories under their names.

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README 

        
![Lovely forks logo](http://musicallyut.xyz/docs/lovely-forks/logo.png)

## Lovely forks



 Firefox addon


 Chrome extension



 

Can also be installed on Opera through the  Opera Chrome-extension addon.



----



An addon to help you notice **notable** forks of a GitHub project.



Sometimes on GitHub, projects are abandoned by the original authors and the

development continues on a fork. However, the original repository is seldom

updated to inform newcomers of that fact. I have often wasted effort on making

a pull-request or installing old buggy versions of projects when the community

had already moved to a fork.



To make matters worse, the old projects usually have higher search-engine

traffic and a lot more stars than the forks. This makes the forks even harder

to find. This addon tries to remedy that by adding a subscript under the name

of the repository on the GitHub page of the project with a link to the most

notable fork (i.e. the fork with the most stars and at least one star), if such

a fork exists.



Also, if the fork is _more recent_ than the upstream, a flame icon is shown

next to it. These are called [_flamey forks_](https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks/issues/13) 

as suggested by [Mottie](https://github.com/Mottie).



## Use cases



The [tipsy plugin](https://github.com/jaz303/tipsy) hasn't been updated since

2012 and there is a [community supported

fork](https://github.com/CloCkWeRX/tipsy) which has merged in all the PRs.

However, the alternative only has 27 stars versus the 1,888 stars of the

original project (at the time of writing):





Tipsy plugin




Similarly, the project [slate](https://github.com/jigish/slate) was last

updated in 2013 and has about 5,000 stars. The [currently active

fork](https://github.com/mattr-/slate) only has 185 stars (at the time of

writing):





slate




In some cases, a new flavour of the project might become visible, like an

internationalized fork ([Semantic-UI-pt-br](https://github.com/Semantic-Org/Semantic-UI-pt-br)

is [Semantic-UI](https://github.com/Semantic-Org/Semantic-UI) in a different

language):





semantic-ui




Or provides new features ([vim-fugitive](https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive) 

provides git integration for vim, 

[vim-mercenary](https://github.com/jlfwong/vim-mercenary) provides Mercurial

integration):





vim-fugitive




## Development



Please install the following before building the extension:



  - [`web-ext`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Getting_started_with_web-ext)

  - [`jq`](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/) **Note:** This is not the `jq` on NPM, which is a server-side `jQuery` replacement.



The project is supplied with a `Makefile` which can produce final files for both Firefox and Chrome.



```bash

make chrome

make firefox

```



The build is done by selectively copying parts of the source code to the folder `./.tmp` and then archiving it again using either `zip` (for Chrome) or `web-ext` (for Firefox).

The final archives are kept in the `./build` folder.



### Testing



The [`StandardJS` style checker](https://github.com/standard/standard) is used for setting the style guide in the code.



For testing, the extension can be loaded into Chrome by going to [chrome://extensions](chrome://extensions) and clicking on the Load Unpacked Extension button.

Then navigate to the `.tmp` folder in the source code root which was created by running `make chrome` and load it. An alternate is to run `make manifest` in the root folder and then load the source code root as the unpacked extension. This will allow for a simpler edit-reload cycle, except while editing `manifest.json.template`.



For Firefox, the easiest way to test the packaged extension would be to download the [unbranded build](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Latest_Builds) or the [Developer Edition](https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/developer/) and loading the extension there. Otherwise, one would need to _sign_ the extension via your account on their Addon server. Go to [`about:addons`](about:addons), to the _Extensions_ Tab and click the Gear icon (Settings) on the top right to load the packed extension.



If the browser still complains that the package has not been signed, then go to [`about:config`](about:config) and set `xpinstall.signatures.required` to `false`. Note that this setting only takes effect on the Developer Edition and the Unbranded versions of the browser even though it shows up in `about:config` pages of the release channel versions as well.



## See Also



 - [useful-forks.github.io](https://github.com/useful-forks/useful-forks.github.io) and [their Chrome extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/useful-forks/aflbdmaojedofngiigjpnlabhginodbf).



## Acknowledgements



This project uses icons made by

[Freepik](http://www.flaticon.com/authors/freepik) and 

[Dave Gandy](http://www.flaticon.com/authors/dave-gandy) from

[www.flaticon.com](http://www.flaticon.com) is licensed by 

[CC BY 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).



[bfred-it](https://github.com/bfred-it) has contributed to improving the look

and feel of the extension considerably. He also brought the extension from the [dark age into the space age](https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks/pull/38) of JavaScript.



[izuzak](https://github.com/izuzak) from GitHub was instrumental in helping me

with bug fixing and suggesting [compare API](https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/commits/#compare-two-commits) 

for improving the heuristic to determine if a fork is more recent than the upstream

repository.



[yfdyh000](https://github.com/yfdyh000) added a [userscript version](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/31469-lovely-forks) and made the switch from Firefox Addon SDK to Web-extensions.



[Jackymancs4](https://github.com/Jackymancs4) fixed [a bug](https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks/issues/40) and re-enabled the settings page.



[olso](https://github.com/olso) added an option to set how many days old the last commit on the current repository should be before the forks are shown.



[Jorgen1040](https://github.com/Jorgen1040) helped fix a bug about multiple "also forked" messages appearing.



[francislavoie](https://github.com/francislavoie) implemented a [repo skip list](https://github.com/musically-ut/lovely-forks/pull/74), to not show forks on specific repos.