GitHub Action
Remove Stale Branches
This Github Action will identify stale branches and mark them for deletion after a set period.
By default, branches are identified as stale if their latest commit is older than 90 days. This is useful for repositories that have many contributors that work on and off, and may forget to cleanup 🧹
This Action look for branches whose last commit is older than a days-before-branch-stale days. It will first add a comment on the latest commit, notifying the contributor that their branch is stale. If no action is taken before days-before-branch-delete days, the branch will be removed.
This can be prevented by removing the comment, or adding new commits to the branch.
Without setting dry_run: true, this action will remove branches. Consider setting dry_run: true until you are happy with how this action works.
| Input | Defaults | Description |
|---|---|---|
github-token |
${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} |
PAT for GitHub API authentication. |
dry-run |
false |
Flag that prevents this action from doing any modification to the repository. |
exempt-organization |
(not set) | Name of a Github organization. Branches for which the latest commiter belongs to this organization will be exempt from cleanup. |
exempt-branches-regex |
^(main| master)$ |
Regular expression defining branches name that are exempt from cleanup. |
exempt-authors-regex |
(not set) | Regular expression defining authors who are exempt from cleanup. |
exempt-protected-branches |
true | Whether protected branches are exempted |
stale-branch-message |
@{author} Your branch [{branchName}]({branchUrl}) hasn't been updated in the last 60 days and is marked as stale. It will be removed in a week.\r\nIf you want to keep this branch around, delete this comment or add new commits to this branch. |
Template for commit comments notifying the author that their branch will be removed. |
days-before-branch-stale |
90 | Number of days since the last commit before a branch is considered stale. Once stale, this action will leave a comment on the last commit, marking the branch as stale. |
days-before-branch-delete |
7 | Number of days before a stale branch is removed. Set to 0 to remove immediately. |
operations-per-run |
10 | Maximum number of stale branches to look at in any run of this action. |
The follow examples show how you can use this action.
This configuration will mark all branches (except for main/master) as stale after 90 days. After 7 more days, it will remove the branch.
on:
schedule:
- cron: "0 0 * * *" # Everday at midnight
jobs:
remove-stale-branches:
name: Remove Stale Branches
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: fpicalausa/remove-stale-branches@v1
with:
dry-run: true # Check out the console output before setting this to falseThis configuration will remove branches of people who are not longer part of the acme-inc organization after two weeks, except for (dependabot)[https://github.com/dependabot].
on:
schedule:
- cron: "0 0 * * *" # Everday at midnight
jobs:
remove-stale-branches:
name: Remove Stale Branches
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: fpicalausa/remove-stale-branches@v1
with:
dry-run: true # Check out the console output before setting this to false
exempt-organization: "acme-inc"
exempt-authors-regex: "^dependabot"
days-before-branch-stale: 7
days-before-branch-delete: 7There are many other actions to remove stale branches out there. Some just remove branches, no question asked. Others close the branche out through a PR.
This action notifies users through a commit comment. There are pros and cons to each approach, pick the one that suits you best!
To start, install dependencies with npm install. The source files live under src.
You can run the tool locally with ts-node src/cli.ts 🖥️
To deploy you changes, start a PR. Don't forget to run npm build and include changes to the dist dir in your commit.