Autobot

Did you ever have to update the same, file(s) in more than one repository and found it tiresome and overwhelming? So did we! That’s why we developed Autobot, a GitHub action that copies files from one branch of a repository to a branch of another and automatically raises a Pull Request, ready to be merged!

Autobot allows us to modify a file in one repository and propagate the change to more than 30, taking away all the burden of maintenance!

Inputs

Input	Description	Required
git_config_user_email	The email of the user who will commit the changes	true
git_config_user_name	The username of the user who will commit the changes	true
source_dir	Source repository directory to copy the files from	true
source_dir_copy_glob	During copying, you can use globbing to control the patterns that will be copied to the directory of the target repo. By default extglob, dotglob and globstar are enabled	false
target_repo	Target repository to copy the files to	true
target_dir	Target repository directory where the files copied from the source directory will be pushed	true
pr_target_repo_base_branch	The branch name in which the code will be merged	false
pr_target_repo_compare_branch	The branch name where the changes will be pushed	false
pr_title	Pull request title	false
pr_label	The label to assign to the pull request	false
pr_description_text	Pull request description text	false

Default values

• pr_target_repo_base_branch: main
• pr_target_repo_compare_branch: autobot/$(printf '%s' "$GITHUB_SHA" | cut -c 1-7)/$GITHUB_RUN_ID-$GITHUB_RUN_ATTEMPT
• pr_title: [autobot] [$(date '+%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')] Automated changes
• pr_label: autobot
• pr_description_text: [autobot] [$(date '+%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')] Automated changes

Example usage

uses: thzois/[email protected]
env:
  GH_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
with:
  git_config_user_email: '[email protected]'
  git_config_user_name: 'ffp-bot'
  target_repo: 'thzois/repository'
  source_dir: 'docs/'
  source_dir_copy_glob: '!(*.yaml)'
  target_dir: ''
  pr_target_repo_base_branch: 'main'
  pr_target_repo_compare_branch: 'autobot/f7fd3c9/3759722240'
  pr_title: '[autobot] [2022-01-01 10:00:00] Automated changes'
  pr_description_text: '[autobot] [2022-01-01 10:00:00] Automated changes'
  pr_label: 'autobot'

Access token

For the action to be able to raise PRs to other repositories, a personal access token is required with the following permissions:

• repo: Full control of private repositories
• admin:org (only read:org)
• write:discussion
• read:discussion

Notes

• Autobot will attempt to create the destination path(s) if they do not exist
• Autobot will overwrite existing files in the destination path(s)
• To copy the contents of the source_dir without copying the source_dir itself, you can use dirname/.. In case you use globbing however, using dirname/. might have unwanted effects
• Autobot uses bash to perform all the operations and cp to copy the files to the target_dir of the target_repo.
• Regaring globbing you can read more here