GitHubGitHub forks in the MacBook notch
A fork count is the number of copies of the repository on other accounts, and it moves for different reasons than stars do.
Forks are contributors and vendorers, mixed together
Every pull request from outside the organisation starts with a fork, so a healthy contribution flow pushes this number up. So does every person who copied the project to change one line for themselves and never came back. The two are indistinguishable in the count.
That makes the ratio more useful than the figure. A project with many stars and few forks is being watched. One with forks approaching a tenth of its stars is being used and modified.
What GitHub returns
The repository object carries forks_count, which counts direct forks only.
A fork of a fork belongs to its own parent and is not added here. The number
also never goes down when somebody deletes their copy in the same session,
because GitHub recomputes it on its own schedule.
The widget asks which repository to count. Add a second widget for a second repository.
What GitHub forks means, exactly
Forks of the repository right now.
A whole number.
How the widget behaves
- Buckets
- hourly, daily, weekly and monthly
- Shape
- A figure, with no sparkline
- Against last period
- No
- Fetched from
- api.github.com
What the widget asks you for
- Repository
- Which repository this tile counts.
- owner/name
Questions
- How is GitHub forks calculated?
- Forks of the repository right now. Notch Metrics reports that number, unchanged, in the MacBook notch.
- Can I see GitHub forks over time?
- GitHub forks is a snapshot of right now, so the widget shows the figure without a sparkline. The windows it accepts are 24 hours, 7, 30 and 90 days, and 12 months.
- What unit is GitHub forks in?
- A whole number.
- What does it cost to put GitHub forks in the notch?
- $9 a month, or $49 a year, with every connector included and no per-integration charge. The seven-day trial needs no card, so you can see your own forks before deciding.