Generate Git Commits

A command-line tool that generates a GitHub (or GitLab) activity graph based off GitLab commits.

Note

If you use GitLab at work, this allows you to import the number off commits you make there to your GitHub profile.

How To Use

1. Make sure you have Git and Node.js installed on your machine.#
2. Create a Personal Access Token in GitLab and make sure you give the permission read_user.
3. Generate your commits and provide the GitLab PAT:

   npx fake-git-history --gitlabToken="<Your GitLab Personal Access Token>"

   This command creates a my-history folder, initializes git, and generates commits for every day within the last year (0-3 commits per day).
4. Create a private repository called my-history in your GitHub or GitLab, and push the changes:

   cd my-history
   git remote add origin git@github.com:<USERNAME>/my-history.git
   git push -u origin master

Done! Now take a look at your GitHub profile 😉

Tip

If you encounter the error fatal: refusing to merge unrelated histories, checkout your local changes to a new branch and push that.

Customizations

--startDate and --endDate

By default, the script generates GitHub commits for all GitLab commits. However, if you want to generate activity for specific dates, use these options:

Important

At the moment, it is crucial to pass both options, if you want to define a time range.

npx fake-git-history --startDate "2020/09/01" --endDate "2020/09/30"

Annotations

Backstory

The idea is already a bit older. At first, I wanted to make a web app allowing to import GitLab commits to GitHub - the challenge was to make it without needing a database.

I actually got far with it (using Next.js), but that dream, to do it without a database was suddenly impossible, because I needed a secure place to store SSH keys (user cant interact with the shell like in this case).

So, I left the project behind for a few weeks, but I still wanted to show that I was coding on GitHub - just not committing specifically on GitHub -, thus I integrated the idea (you can still find the TypeScript class that I used for the Next.js approach in /src/.utils/gitlab.ts) into this fork of a Git commit history faker. Only thing is: you don't fake it anymore! :)