GH-46903: [CI] Automatically flag stale issues #46904
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| stale-issue-message: "This issue has been marked as stale because it has had no activity in the past 365 days. Please remove the stale label or comment below, or this issue will be closed in 14 days. If this usage question has evolved into a feature request or docs update, please remove the 'Type: usage' label and add the 'Type: enhancement' label instead." | ||
| stale-issue-label: "Status: stale-warning" | ||
| days-before-issue-stale: 365 | ||
| days-before-issue-close: 14 |
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I would personally suggest not closing issues even if they are stale because then it becomes harder to find them (if you search for just closed issues you'll also see the ones that were actually fixed)
Maybe you could mark the issues as stale but leave them open. That way they still show up in searches but you can easily filter them out with -label:stale if you want 🤔
I suspect simply by marking / commenting on an issue that it is stale will encourage some number of the initial filters to close them manually
(same comment applies below)
| days-before-issue-close: 14 | |
| days-before-issue-close: -1 |
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Thanks for your input here Andrew!
I see what you mean, though the issues we're talking about here are user questions - in a lot of cases, the conversation has trailed off awaiting a reply from the user, or has been resolved but the ticket left open and it's creating more noise in the repo when searching. The message here has the suggestion to convert them to enhancements if we need to update the docs or if the conversation has surfaced a feature request.
Just to check, what benefits do you see to keeping these open?
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Folks on the mailing list seemed broadly supportive earlier, but if this is going to be contentious, it seems perhaps I'd be better off writing something up to vote on or some other mechanism - I don't want to just decide on this unilaterally if it's going to be controversial.
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Since I don't really spend much time in this repo, I think you should defer to the mailing list consensus
Just to check, what benefits do you see to keeping these open?
The benefits in my mind are that random external users who come to search if there is a ticket about the issue they are having will be more likely to find a pre existing one.
If we close all old tickets, it will be more likely that new issues are opened that duplicated old ones, and the old context may be lost / forgotten
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To be clear, I don't oppose this PR, but I since I don't work in this repo much I don't think feel comfortable approving it either.
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No worries re approval; I'm going to check in with a few more folks before I mark it ready for review. Thanks again for sharing; you've helped me get a bit more clarity on things to consider around how users get help.
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We recommend usage type issues to be asked on GitHub discussion / mailing list and this is something we prompt when opening those:
https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/3f95bc18828d3649fe0c4a437bd70150819952cb/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/usage_question.yaml
we might want to update those templates to suggest that long inactivity on those issues might close them but doesn't seem necessary to me.
github-actions
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awaiting changes
.github/workflows/stale.yml
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| close-stale-issues-enhancement: | ||
| runs-on: ubuntu-latest | ||
| permissions: | ||
| issues: write | ||
| pull-requests: write | ||
| steps: | ||
| - uses: actions/stale@v9 | ||
| with: | ||
| # exclude PRs | ||
| days-before-pr-stale: -1 | ||
| days-before-pr-close: -1 | ||
| only-issue-labels: "Type: enhancement" | ||
| exempt-issue-labels: "Status: needs champion" | ||
| stale-issue-message: "This issue has been marked as stale because it has had no activity in the past 365 days. Please remove the stale label or comment below, or this issue will be closed in 14 days. If this improvement is still desired but has no current owner, please add the 'Status: needs champion' label." | ||
| stale-issue-label: "Status: stale-warning" | ||
| days-before-issue-stale: 365 | ||
| days-before-issue-close: 14 | ||
| repo-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} |
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Rationale here is again about improving signal-to-noise ratio and so we can better identify enhancements to prioritise.
.github/workflows/stale.yml
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| issues: write | ||
| pull-requests: write | ||
| steps: | ||
| - uses: actions/stale@v9 |
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We are trying to use the pinned sha for security reasons on the new actions, let's use it here:
| - uses: actions/stale@v9 | |
| - uses: actions/stale@5bef64f19d7facfb25b37b414482c7164d639639 #v9.1.0 |
If we want v9.0 is this one: 28ca1036281a5e5922ead5184a1bbf96e5fc984e See here:
https://github.com/actions/stale/releases
On the other occurrences too
github-actions
bot
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awaiting change review
Rationale for this change
We have lots of stale issues/PRs
What changes are included in this PR?
CI job to warn then close
Are these changes tested?
Nope
Are there any user-facing changes?
No