Github Commit Tracker

[semmons99]

@wicz and @gjp

If you've seen the mailing list thread, I proposed an integration with Github commits and mendibot for the hackdays. The plan is to have it work as follows

1. A staff member issues !hackday-start topic message
   • this sets a topic and allows mendibot to start tracking gh commits
2. User types !gh-follow mendicant-university/community or !gh-follow mendicant-university/community:my-branch to tell mendibot to track commits on this code.
3. Every n seconds, mendibot queries the ATOM feed of the repo for new commits and reports them
4. Every 30-60 minutes mendibot reports the number of commits in the last 30-60 minutes along with the total commits so far
5. When the hackday is over a staff member issues !hackday-stop
   • mendibot writes out a final commit count and stops tracking the repos.

I'd like to get this in place ahead of the next hackday. We'll wait until #31 is merged to see what we can reuse from it. If this is something one or both of you would like to tackle, let me know.

[practicingruby]

Is there a need to specialize this for hack days? I.e. I think the gh-follow command makes sense but do we really need !hackday-start/stop?

[semmons99]

It mostly is a way to flush the pool of tracked repos. We could just implement a !flush (or similar command) that clears mendibot's list of tracked repos. I just want to make sure mendi doesn't become too noisy. I also wanted to use it as a way to start tracking number of commits since the hackday started. Perhaps we could just use the existing !start_discussion and !end_discussion commands to flush and reset the tracker.

[practicingruby]

Let's go with a !gh-clear command or something for now. I am trying to reduce the coupling between these concepts.

[gjp]

I could see the trackers being used outside of hack days. If we don't frame all the trackers inside one pair of commands, we'd need something like !gh-unfollow. Assuming we'd have multiple trackers going at once during an event, I think we'd also want the ability to list active trackers, and also give an all-stop, like !gh-unfollow all.

[practicingruby]

@gjp: sounds good.

[semmons99]

Sounds good. So I'm thinking four simple commands.

!gh-add - start tracking a repo
!gh-rm - stop tracking a repo
!gh-rm --all - stop tracking all repos
!gh-ls - list tracked repos

Mendibot will reset statistics anytime gh-rm --all is used. It will treat the first !gh-add command as the time to start tracking commit stats.

Are we worried that anyone can run !gh-rm? If so perhaps we should use the new ACL @wicz built for us.

[gjp]

Shorter commands FTW.

All commands are logged and the worst impact of an accidental gh-rm is that the stats are reset, so I wouldn't think we'd need authentication.

[semmons99]

@gjp I think you're right. Let's wait until it becomes a problem before we add complexity to this.

[practicingruby]

Yeah, no authorization needed until this gets abused.