actions / actions/stale

Stale issues closed by pull request or manually should have the stale label removed

Open
#810 3 comments 3 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
1.7k
Forks
434
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

The problem

In some repositories, the stale label has a description that explains it means the issue is 'closed, but still valid'. This means that contributors can also search through closed issues with the stale label to look for valid issues. However, if an issue was first stale, and then later fixed and closed, the stale label still remains and isn't removed. This makes it difficult to tell whether closed issues marked stale are valid or not.

The solution

Issues that were closed not by the stale bot should have their stale tag removed. If it was closed by a maintainer, it was either fixed or the maintainer came to a decision to not fix it and explicitly close it. Either way, it was not closed due to being stale and should no longer have the stale label.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No file or test is named. Start by locating the code that handles issue closure and stale-label management, then trace how it distinguishes stale-bot closures from maintainer closures. Done means a stale label is removed when an issue is closed by other means, while it remains when the stale bot closes the issue; add or update coverage for both paths.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
ci-cd, devops
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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