badges/shields

Badge request: GitHub activity, per branch

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#714 opened on May 13, 2016

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 (3 comments) (10 reactions) (0 assignees)JavaScript (22,337 stars) (5,423 forks)batch import
good first issueservice-badge

Description

When I'm in the middle of a large re-write on a project, I'd really like to have an obvious “activity is happening ” indicator for the README on the stable / master / production branch. I think a shield could serve this purpose admirably.

There's a couple possibilities I see here, any of which (or all!) could be best implemented:

  1. Showing date of the latest commit to the project and/or to that branch, i.e. , , , or , : https://img.shields.io/github/activity/USER/REPO.svg https://img.shields.io/github/activity/user/repo/BRANCH.svg
  2. Showing the name of the branch with the most (or most recent?) activity: i.e. , , etc etc: https://img.shields.io/github/active-branch/USER/REPO.svg https://img.shields.io/github/active-branch/user/repo/BRANCH.svg
  3. Showing the number of ‘active’ branches, either by a time-range, or by whatever heuristic GitHub uses for the branches page (if that's exposed): i.e. , , etc etc: https://img.shields.io/github/active-branches/USER/REPO.svg

(Could even combine 1. and 2. , or 2. and 3. although those are getting a little long!)

Contributor guide

Tech stack
javascriptnodejs
Domain
backendapi
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
Node.jsfamiliarity with badge creation pipelineGitHub API basics
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
45
Research direction
Study the existing badge implementation pattern in the shields.io codebase, specifically how other GitHub related badges fetch data and generate SVG. Implement new endpoints for branch activity badges (e.g., /github/activity/:user/:repo/:branch). Use GitHub API to get commit dates and branch names. Ensure caching is applied. Refer to the issue comments for potential design considerations.