Good First Issues

A GitHub action to generate a web interface with an updated set of issues. This means that:

• the interface is created under docs/
• issues are populated in docs/_issues
• the site is served via Jekyll

This means that you can use the action in your workflows too, and choose how often / when to run it, and how to update your GitHub pages. Continue reading to learn more.

Inputs

repos-file

Optional The path to the repos.txt (or otherwise named) file. Defaults to repos.txt in the root of the repository. The file should include a single list of repository URLS, and (optionally) one or more comma separated tags:

https://github.com/spack/spack hpc,package-management
https://github.com/singularityhub/sregistry containers,singularity

label

optional By default, the repository will filter down to issues labeled with "good first issue". However, you can change this by setting this variable to something else.

collection

optional By default, the issues will each produce a markdown file to add to the "docs" GitHub pages folder, in a subfolder named by this variable, which defaults to _issues. If you produce a site that has more than one collection, you can change this to something else.

Example usage

    steps:
    - name: Checkout Code
      uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Generate First Issues
      uses: rseng/[email protected]
      with:
        repos-file: '.github/repos.txt'
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

You only need to define repos-file if you change the path (note that the above is changed from .github/repos.txt). It's highly recommended that you don't use master branch, but instead a version release or commit (as shown above). Here is how you might update the label used:

    steps:
    - name: Checkout Code
      uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Generate First Issues
      uses: rseng/[email protected]
      with:
        label: 'bug'
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Finally, if I want to instead output to a folder called _another (a Jekyll collection name) as a relative path to the docs folder, I can set that as follows:

    steps:
    - name: Checkout Code
      uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Generate First Issues
      uses: rseng/[email protected]
      with:
        collection: '_another'
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

A full (realistic) workflow might look like the following:

name: good-first-issues

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
  - cron: 0 2 * * *
  - cron: 5 15 * * *
  - cron: 5 10 * * *
  - cron: 5 20 * * *
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  good-first-issues:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Generate First Issues
      uses: rseng/[email protected]
      with:
        repos-file: '.github/repos.txt'
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

    - name: Update Repository
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        UPDATE_BRANCH: "main"
      run: |
        printf "GitHub Actor: ${GITHUB_ACTOR}\n"
        git remote set-url origin "https://x-access-token:${GITHUB_TOKEN}@github.com/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY}.git"
        git branch
        printf "Branch to push to is ${UPDATE_BRANCH}\n"
        git checkout ${UPDATE_BRANCH} || git checkout -b ${UPDATE_BRANCH}
        git branch
        git config --global user.name "github-actions"
        git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
        git pull origin ${UPDATE_BRANCH}
        git add docs/*
        git add docs/_issues/*
        if git diff-index --quiet HEAD --; then
           printf "No changes\n"
        else
           printf "Changes\n"
           git commit -m "Automated deployment to update first issues $(date '+%Y-%m-%d')"
           git push origin ${UPDATE_BRANCH}
        fi

Note that we use another step to push to our main branch. Actions cannot trigger other actions, so the workflow will not be triggered again.

Examples

• hpc-social: a dark themed branded Good First Issues board
• awesome-rseng to generate first issues from the awesome-rseng repository, with repos listed in .github/repos.txt

Questions

How do I customize the interface?

The interface will always be generated in the docs subfolder, so if you haven't created it there yet, the action will generate it the first time around. It's up to you to add all or a subset of files in docs/* or docs/_issues after the content is generated. For example, you could add both docs and _issues in a next step that will commit to an existing or new branch:

git add docs/*
git add docs/_issues/*

This means that after the original docs is added and merged, you should be able to customize or otherwise update the template to your liking. The folder won't be edited if it already exists beyond the _issues folder.

Do you have an example? Please contribute by opening an issue or a pull request!