Activity Method - default_branch_updated not working properly

[bigswede74]

Describe the bug

When ACTIVITY_METHOD = default_branch_updated repos with the last commit date outside of the INACTIVE_DAYS are not returned as stale repos.

To Reproduce

1. Create a repository in your organization
2. Add a workflow to check for stale repos
3. Add the state repo action as shown below

   - name: Run stale_repos tool
   uses: github/stale-repos@v1
   env:
   GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
   ORGANIZATION: ${{ github.repository_owner }}
   EXEMPT_TOPICS: "reserved"
   INACTIVE_DAYS: 60
   ACTIVITY_METHOD: "default_branch_updated"

4. Verify you have a stale repo by running the below GH CLI command and verifying the last commit date

   gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/commits | jq -r '.[0] | "\(.sha) \(.commit.message) \(.commit.author.name) \(.commit.author.date)"'

5. Run your workflow and verify the repo is not returned as a stale repo

Expected behavior

Any repository with the last commit date outside of the INACTIVE_DAYS should be returned as a stale repo.

Screenshots

No response

Additional context

My repos have the visibility of Internal but after looking in the code for this action this does not seem to matter.

[zkoppert]

@bigswede74 Thanks for opening this one! I'll take a look at reproducing now.

[zkoppert]

Is it accurate to say that this is failing silently or is the program halting?

[bigswede74]

Is it accurate to say that this is failing silently or is the program halting?

@zkoppert Correct, the action finishes however the stale repo is not identified.

Starting stale repo search...
Exempt topics: ['reserved']
https://github.com/{org}/maintenance is exempt from stale repo check
Found 0 stale repos in {org}
No stale repos found

[zkoppert]

I'm unable to reproduce this on my first try. Take a look at what i've done below and see if that makes sense or if I should be trying something different. Alternatively, if you could find an open source repo that this fails on so I can test and debug there or if you'd like to pair, I can send you a link to schedule some time to walk through this together. Let me know what you think!

ENV:

INACTIVE_DAYS=7
ORGANIZATION='github'
EXEMPT_TOPICS='keep, hide, run-away'
ACTIVITY_METHOD='default_branch_updated'

RELEVANT CODE FROM stale_repos.py:

days_inactive = (datetime.now(timezone.utc) - active_date).days
visibility = "private" if repo.private else "public"
if days_inactive > int(inactive_days_threshold):
    inactive_repos.append(
        (repo.html_url, days_inactive, active_date_disp, visibility)
    )
    print(f"{repo.html_url}: {days_inactive} days inactive")  # type: ignore

and

def get_active_date(repo):
    """Get the last activity date of the repository.

    Args:
        repo: A Github repository object.

    Returns:
        A date object representing the last activity date of the repository.
    """
    activity_method = os.getenv("ACTIVITY_METHOD", "pushed").lower()
    try:
        if activity_method == "default_branch_updated":
            commit = repo.branch(repo.default_branch).commit
            active_date = parse(commit.commit.as_dict()["committer"]["date"])
        elif activity_method == "pushed":
            last_push_str = repo.pushed_at  # type: ignored
            if last_push_str is None:
                return None
            active_date = parse(last_push_str)
        else:
            raise ValueError(
                f"""
                ACTIVITY_METHOD environment variable has unsupported value: '{activity_method}'.
                Allowed values are: 'pushed' and 'default_branch_updated'
                """
            )
    except github3.exceptions.GitHubException:
        print(f"{repo.html_url} had an exception trying to get the activity date.")
        return None
    return active_date

I stepped through with a debugger and observed that it

• accurately reports the last commit date
• accurately evaluates that the days_inactive is greater than the threshold
• adds the repo to the inactive_repos list

OUTPUT:

https://github.com/github/github_cards: 5614 days inactive
https://github.com/github/github-flavored-markdown: 3589 days inactive
https://github.com/github/version_sorter: 57 days inactive

output of github_cards matches the gh api query given in this issue

zkoppert@Zacherys-MBP ~ % gh api repos/github/github_cards/commits | jq -r '.[0] | "\(.sha) \(.commit.message) \(.commit.author.name) \(.commit.author.date)"'
8350db1e4f3a9946568d391e058633933f709b25 first ********* 2009-01-13T23:04:40Z

[bigswede74]

I will try to pull the repo into our org and add some logging.

[zkoppert]

Thanks! I really appreciate it!

[bigswede74]

I found the issue, I was using the defalut ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} which only has access to the repository the workflows is running under. I generated a new access token and it works now. Sorry for the trouble.

[zkoppert]

No problem! Glad you've got it!