Hypercrx Handbook
🤖 Hypercrx project adds analytic dashboards to GitHub, aiming at tracing, digging and gaining insight into the projects and developers you're interested in. We do this by inserting useful dashboards into GitHub pages. Hypercrx provides an effective way for digital operations and analysis of open source community.
Before being renamed to "Hypercrx" in June 2021, it was called "hypertrons-crx," which is still the name of the project repository. Initially, the project was designed as the frontend for the open-source RPA robot Hypertrons, with the purpose of facilitating interaction with Hypertrons, hence the name "hypertrons-crx." The term "hypertrons" indicated its close connection with Hypertrons, and the "crx" suffix for Chrome browser extensions denoted the project's nature as a browser plugin.
Later, with the conception, birth, and development of OpenDigger, X-lab's open lab produced many metric data. Displaying these metrics directly on GitHub pages through a browser extension proved to be an excellent method. As a result, "hypertrons-crx" added the functionality of data visualization. When data visualization became the main feature of "hypertrons-crx," it needed a new name. After a vote, "hypertrons-crx" was renamed to "Hypercrx." However, to ensure the validity of existing reference links, the name of the project repository was not changed.
Hypercrx is currently available on two browser extension marketplaces:
- Install the plugin from the Chrome Web Store.
- Install the plugin from the Edge Add-ons Store.
After installing the plugin, you will notice some additional interface elements when visiting a developer's profile or a project's repository page. These elements are the features embedded into the GitHub page by Hypercrx, which primarily consist of chart components at present.
| Developer's Profile Page | Project's Repository Page |
|---|---|
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The image below gathers all the charts embedded by Hypercrx in a project's repository and a developer's profile page. These charts are self-explanatory to some extent, making it easy for users to get started.
Note: Due to resource limitations, OpenDigger, the data source for Hypercrx, does not export metric data files for projects and developers that are not sufficiently active. So if you don't see any charts embedded in your profile, please try to be more active!
Using the OpenDigger project as a starting point, this section will demonstrate how to explore an open-source community with Hypercrx (showing only partial functionalities).
At the top of the page, to the right of the repository name, Hypercrx inserts some small tags. For exxample, the numbers on these tags below show the activity, OpenRank, and the number of participants and contributors for the project last month. When you hover your mouse over the tags, a tooltip view is triggered, allowing you to see historical values.
Stars are cumulative metrics; on the GitHub repository page, we can only see the final value. The Star History project compensates for the inability to view historical Star values. Hypercrx goes a step further by directly embedding the Star trend into the Star button, where you can view it by hovering your mouse over it.
"Hey, why did the OpenDigger have such a significant number of Stars in March 2022? What happened?" Curiosity may drive you to use a search engine to investigate further.
Hypercrx has embedded OSGraph using an iframe, inserting a Perceptor after the Insights tab on the GitHub repository page. Clicking on Perceptor reveals contributor activity racing bar and three network graphs.
- Project Contribution Network (analyzes development activities like Issues, Pull Requests, Commits, and Code Reviews to identify core contributors),
- Project Ecosystem Network (examines interconnections between projects and organizations to offer a comprehensive view of the ecosystem and collaborative efforts),
- Project Community Network (analyzes the distribution and composition of the project's community based on activities and affiliations).
By jumping to the developer's profile page of frank-zsy from Perceptor, you can see his global activity and OpenRank trends. His OpenRank used to reach 28.64, making him seem like a significant contributor. Frank-zsy pinned the X-lab2017/open-digger repository at the top, and given his key position in the Project Contribution Network, it's pretty clear that he is a major maintainer of OpenDigger.
The personal profile page also contains a Perceptor with three network graphs. OSGraph also provides three types of networks for developers embedded via iframe:
- Development Activity Network (analyzes a developer's activities such as Issues, Pull Requests, Commits, and Code Reviews to showcase their open-source contributions and key project involvements),
- Open Source Partner Network (examines collaboration relationships to identify and find like-minded open-source partners who frequently collaborate),
- Open Source Interest Network (analyzes the themes and tags of projects a developer is involved in to discover their technical interests and expertise, showcasing their professional knowledge and preferred projects).
