derek

derek

It's derek . Nice to meet you. I'd like to help you with Pull Requests and Issues on your GitHub project.

Please show support for the project and Star the repo.

From the team that bought you OpenFaaS - Serverless Functions Made Simple.

What can I do?

• Check that commits are signed-off

When someone sends a PR without a sign-off, I'll apply a label no-dco and also send them a comment pointing them to the contributor guide. Most of the time when I've been helping the OpenFaaS project - people read my message and fix things up without you having to get involved.

• Allow users in a specified .DEREK.yml file to manage issues and pull-requests

You don't have to give people full write access anymore to help you manage issues and pull-requests. I'll do that for you, just put them in a .DEREK.yml file in the root and when they comment on an issue then I'll use my granular permissions instead.

• Wait.. doesn't the term "maintainer" mean write access in GitHub?

No this is what Derek sets out to resolve. The users in your maintainers list have granular permissions which you'll see in detail when you add the app to your repo org.

maintainers:
- alexellis
- rgee0

You can use the alias "curators" instead for the exact same behaviour:

curators:
- alexellis
- rgee0

• What about roles?

We are planning to add roles in the ROADMAP which will mean you can get even more granular and have folks who can only add labels but not close issues for instance. If you feel you need to make that distinction. It will also let you call the roles whatever you think makes sense.

Note that the assign/unassign commands provides the shortcut me to assign to the commenter

Examples:

• Update the title of a PR or issue

Let's say a user raised an issue with the title I can't get it to work on my computer

Derek set title: Question - does this work on Windows 10?

• Triage and organise work through labels

Labels can be used to triage work or help sort it.

Derek add label: proposal
Derek add label: help wanted
Derek remove label: bug

• Assign work

You can assign work to people too

Derek assign: alexellis
Derek unassign: me

• Open and close issues and PRs

Sometimes you may want to close or re-open issues or Pull Requests:

Derek close
Derek reopen

• Lock/un-lock conversation/threads

This is useful for when conversations are going off topic or an old thread receives a lot of comments that are better placed in a new issue.

Derek lock
Derek unlock

Backlog:

• Derek as a managed GitHub App
• Lock thread
• Edit title
• Toggle the DCO-feature

Future work:

• Caching of customers / .DEREK.yml file
• Observability of GitHub API Token rate limit
• Add roles & actions
• Branch Checking

Live demo here

Examples on real-world projects:

Docker / Moby:

https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/35736

OpenFaaS CLI:

https://github.com/openfaas/faas-cli/issues/85

How do I work?

I'm designed to be installed as a GitHub App, but don't worry - I don't need a lot of permissions. Just access to issues and Pull Requests will do.

I'm not a long-running daemon.. I'd get bored that way. I work with webhooks - so stick me in a serverless framework like OpenFaaS and forget about me. Just apply oil from time to time.

This is me in action! Normally contributors edit and re-push within a few minutes after re-reading the contribution guide.

Inspiration for Derek

The idea for a bot that could comment on issues or respond to activity is from the docker/docker or Moby project's bot called Poule. It's a much more complex long-running daemon which uses Personal Access Tokens (so needs to run as a full GitHub login). Derek is much simpler (so hackable) and can be installed with granular permissions.

Where is Derek working now?

Derek is active and operating 24/7 helping the award-winning OpenFaaS project!

• https://github.com/moby/moby
• http://github.com/openfaas/faas
• http://github.com/openfaas/faas-netes
• http://github.com/openfaas/faas-cli

Maintainers / contributors

• Alex Ellis - author
• Richard Gee (@rgee0) - co-maintainer
• John Mccabe (@johnmccabe) - contributor

Alex Ellis created Derek to automate project maintainer duties around licensing and to help bring granular permissions back to GitHub. Derek has empowered contributors in the OpenFaaS community to run and maintain the project without needing full write access. OpenFaaS contributors continue to improve Derek so they can get the job done without fuss.

Contributions

Please follow the OpenFaaS contribution guide.

Get your own Derek robot

You can host and manage your own Derek robot using these instuctions, or use our managed service. To use our managed service get in touch with Alex Ellis for more info.