Feature Request: Can this be turned into a GitHub App?

[Mariatta]

Thanks for this project, I found it really useful, but I'm uh... lazy.. when it comes to command line 😥 🙇‍♀️

I think it would be great for this to exists as a GitHub App, and easily installed to any repo we like.
I'll be interested to help build such app :)

[hackebrot]

Yes! I love that idea! 😃

[michaeljoseph]

👋 @Mariatta
I'm curious about how the app would work? What events would it be responding to?

[mariatta-bot]

🤖 Mariatta was mentioned, but she's out of open source until end of September 2019. Hopefully someone else can look into this in the meantime.

[hackebrot]

Hi @michaeljoseph! 👋

Mariatta and I chatted about how the GitHub app would work offline and we came up with the following design. 📝

Adding the app

When the app is added to a GitHub repo it will check for a labels file on the repo's default branch.

• If it can't find one it will use fetch to create one based on the repo's GitHub labels and commit the file on the repo's default branch.
• If it can find one it will use fetch to update it based on the repo's GitHub labels and commit the changed file to the repo's default branch.

GitHub label event

When a user modifies a GitHub label of a repo, the labels app will react to event and use fetch to update the labels file and commit the changed file to the repo's default branch.

GitHub push event

When a users pushes commits to the repo's default branch, the labels app will react to the event and check whether the commit modifies the labels file.

If the file was modified, the labels app will use sync to update the repo's GitHub labels and commit the changed labels file (sync updates the labels file, so that TOML section names match the name parameter).

GitHub pull request event

When a new pull-request is created, the labels app will react to the event and check whether it modifies the labels file.

If the file was modified, the labels app use sync with the dryrun option and comment on the pull-request how merging the pull-request would change the repo's GitHub labels.

---

I think it would be really cool if we could implement this idea as a GitHub Action! 🤖

I'm curious to hear what you think about our design!

[hackebrot]

Other use cases

(notes from @Mariatta and my chat at PyCon DE)

• import from another repository
• export to other repositories
• keep labels in sync across repositories in org (select labels)

[mariatta-bot]

🤖 Mariatta was mentioned, but she's out of open source until end of September 2019. Hopefully someone else can look into this in the meantime.

[hackebrot]

What do you think @michaeljoseph? 😃

[jean]

I just noticed that there is a GitHub Action based on labels: https://github.com/marketplace/actions/manage-issue-labels
It looks like it allows defining a master repo that pushes out labels to multiple other repos, but I couldn't figure out exactly how that works yet.

[tprasadtp]

@jean I created it. You can define labels in .github/labels.toml(default) and use it as

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
name: labels
jobs:
  labels:
    name: labels
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: sync labels
      uses: tprasadtp/labels@master # Prefer using a tagged version!!!
      with:
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

It will sync the labels, for the repo in which actions is being executed. To manage labels for multiple repos in a single workflow, you have to use builds matrix and a Personal Access Token.

jobs:
  labels:
    name: labels
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
     strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        repo: [ "repo1", "repo2", "repo3", "repo4"]
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: sync labels
      uses: tprasadtp/labels@master # Prefer using a tagged version!!!
      with:
        file: .github/labels.toml
        repo: ${{ matrix.repo }}
        token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}

Note: It only works on x86_64 and Linux.

[browniebroke]

I've setup a GitHub action in my projects to run labels on push to main, when the changes look relevant. I'm pretty sure I copied it from somewhere else a while back, but I can't remember where...

name: Sync Github labels

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
    paths:
      - ".github/**"

jobs:
  labels:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v4
        with:
          python-version: 3.x
      - name: Install labels
        run: pip install labels
      - name: Sync config with Github
        run: labels -u ${{ github.repository_owner }} -t ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} sync -f .github/labels.toml

I recently managed to tweak it with the right permissions, so it works with the native GITHUB_TOKEN, scoped to give write access to the issues.

I've put together pull request #36 to simplify the user-land setup a bit and document its usage.

Suggestions welcome!