Is it possible to completely remove an issue from the GitHub issue tracker?
No, the github API only allows you to open/close/reopen issues. Here's the Issues API docs.
You can edit an existing issue (let's say if it's a duplicate) and you can change the title, description and target milestone to be something completely different. That's as close as you can get to removing the ticket, AFIK.
Update Nov 2018: You now can delete issues if you are a owner of the repository!
See "Github - remove issues entered in error"
https://docs.github.com/en/github/managing-your-work-on-github/deleting-an-issue mentions:
People with admin permissions in a repository can permanently delete an issue from a repository.
For other people (without permission), questionto42's comment shows that you can ask to GitHub support for the issue to be deleted, as illustrated here.
At May 2018, original answer:
Three 8 years later, and closing issues remains the answer (still no deletion possible).
See "The Ghost of Issues Past", where GitHub advise to check and close:
issues opened over a year ago state:open created:<2013-01-01
the ones I'm involved with involves:twp state:open created:<2013-01-01
and those not updated in the last year involves:twp state:open updated:<2013-01-01
For posterity: Deleting issues would be a bad thing, since in general they can be targets of associations on github.
But if you are willing to sacrifice the collaboration info, here is a "whack it with a sledgehammer" approach:
Clone your original repo.
Copy your issues via the Issues API.
Delete the original repo; alternatively, chose a new name for your new repo.
Re-create a new repo based on your clone.
Re-create the issues you want to keep via the Issues API.
I imagine this could potentially lose a lot of other linking information as well such as forks, pull requests, etc.
Public feature request
I wrote to GitHub in 2014-08 and https://github.com/jdennes replied by email:
Thanks for the suggestion. It's only possible to edit/clear the issue content currently. However I've added a +1 to this suggestion on our internal Feature Request List.
confirming it was not possible.
Best workaround so far
set the title to something that will never conflict with any search, e.g. a single dot ..
This may not hide the history of your blunder entirely because of the automatic undeletable "changed the title to" comments.
make the body empty
GitHub staff has the power
If something is a security issue, contact GitHub staff, they usually reply quickly, and are able to remove issues for good as can be seen at: http://archive.is/OfjVt which has issue 1 and 3 but no 2.
You can delete the entire repo if it's really important.
Possible workaround
As of 04/2019 not all issues can be deleted current work around is to edit the issue then delete the edit history, the only downside is that the issue still exist and the old title could be seen.
You could by just asking to github to ban the user that created the issue 😁
Source: https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/253#issuecomment-290944938
Users are unable to do this, including repository owner.
But issues can be deleted by Github support. One may contact them and request deletion. It may be delayed or refused but it is an available option that can be used.
Still impossible. Another workaround to the ones suggested in the other answers is to label the issue as "deleted" (or any other label you might fancy better), to be able to filter them out if you use the github API to retrieve them. Obviously you should use that specific label only for this purpose, setting the label when you close the issue.
You can create a new repository.
Transfer (yeah it is possible) unwanted issues to the new repository.
Then delete the new repository.
Related
I have this issue when I try to merge my branch to the main one for my RASA chatbot project and I want to know if there are any ways to fix this and create a pull request or should I just change my main branch to the domain-side branch
Ok so I fixed the issue by deleting the .rasa cache folder
This can occur when there are a lot of commits in your Pull Request
Unfortunately, this is a known github issue.
Thanks for writing to GitHub support and sorry for the trouble!
We have received a few similar reports regarding big pull requests. I can confirm that our team is working on fixing this problem, and I've added your report to that issue.
Unfortunately I won't be able to provide an estimated time on when this might get fixed. We know this is not ideal, but hope you understand.
Is there anything we can do to preserve our comments and alleviate this issue now and in the future?
You should be able to use our API to get a copy of the comments in this pull request:
https://developer.github.com/v3/pulls/comments/#list-comments-on-a-pull-request
https://developer.github.com/v3/pulls/reviews/#list-reviews-on-a-pull-request
If you have any question regarding using API we can definitely offer more detailed instructions.
Unfortunately I'm not sure if there's anything you can do on your part to view this pull request normally.
One thing you could try is viewing this PR in Incognito window or logged out.
I was actually able to view the PR you linked because I don't have write access to this repository, so GitHub will try to load less things for me such as edit buttons and so on. Of course this won't allow you to merge the pull request and so on, but perhaps it would help for you to look at its content?
Lastly, while we are working on consistently supporting large pull requests, you might consider keeping pull requests relatively short for now to avoid running into this again.
I hope this helps clear things up, and please let us know if you have any other questions.
Please refer to the full discussion provided here.
Is there any documentation out there to suggest that GitHub issues are eternal? More specifically, are their URIs reliable to link to?
E.g., I want to link to a Joda-Time issue in a Javadoc to give context as to why a custom de/serializer was necessary. If the link is reliably static I'll be comfortable referencing it in code.
Yes
Git issues are completly reliable, no one can remove an issue, even repository's administrators.
A git issue will never die, the worst thing that can happen to an issue is getting locked, resulting in others not being able to comment on them, but still, it's visible to everyone.
Edit: Please note that by removing a repository, all it's issues, pull requests, wiki pages, etc. are removed. More about forks on this.
Is there a way to make bitbucket show commit messages as part of comments/activity related to a specific issue, whenever it's been marked-up in said message; the same way github does?
Thanks.
Issues, pull requests, users and commit hashes can be linked in BitBucket issues and commit messages.
Issues can be closed automatically by including something like resolves #123. Commits referencing issue 123 will generate a cross-reference in the issue. This relies on the issues hook to be enabled, which is done by default on new (after August, 2012) issues-enabled repositories.
A little more specific to this, as I had the issue where I was putting issues into my commits, ala "issue #89" which gave me links from the commit into the issue, but not vice versa. Finally found that only a specific set of commands would cause the issue to cross-reference to the commit. This issue led to this guide of actions:
so if I use "ref bug #89", then I got the links and cross referencing in the commit and issue i was looking for.
It would be really great to have a Github issue be in an intermediary "Resolved" state before I close the issue.
Right now, I have a "Resolved" label and I manually select the issue and change it's label on the web after I commit. Is there a way I can do this from the commit message?
I am sure this is a common problem. How do you guys solve this?
I have never used Github API but can this be done using the API If I were to do this myself?
Since September 14, 2016 you could manage your states with projects. See image below:
Reference and source: GitHub - A whole new GitHub Universe: announcing new tools, forums, and features.
I know it's not like a new state like "needs verification" because you can't like #NevikRehnel said in his answer. But you could make a column named "open", "needs verification" and "closed" and all the issues can you list in correct column.
No, Github issues only support two states (open and closed). Any other "states" must be realized via labels, as you are already doing right now.
And as of right now, there is no way to apply labels from commit messages.
You can always request such features from Github support of course, and they might be implemented at some point.
You can manage this problem using this method : Adding and reassigning github issues via commit message.
A simple ruby script will run on each commit, and check the commit message looking for ~myLabel and =assignedMember to update correctly the issue.
I think the answer is no, but maybe I'm missing something: in most repos, you only have one or two admins, and a bunch of "collaborators". But it looks like the collaborators can't assign issues (eg, to themselves), nor can they label issues (even ones they created).
Bug? Design feature? I'm using it wrong? Are there any workarounds?
Looking at Issues 2.0: The Next Generation, this seems to be by design, and from the comments, this isn't the only "problem" users are facing:
It looks like issues can only be assigned to collaborators.
I'd still like to be able to assign an issue (or someone to claim one) to a developer who is not a repo collaborator. After all it is a very common workflow that collaboration happens with forks and pull requests.
One potential workaround (not tested myself) is for a user to fork the original repo, and reproduce the issue in the issue tracker of that new forked repo (that he owns):
the new issue would keep an html link to the original issue of the original repo
the user can assign and label issues.
Obviously that involves a bit of duplication, but for bugs a user wants complete ownership of, that can be worth doing.