Cleanowners action

Cleanowners is a GitHub Action that is designed to help keep CODEOWNERS files current by removing users that are no longer a part of the organization. This is helpful for companies that are looking to remove outdated information in the CODEOWNERS file. This action can be paired with other CODEOWNERS related actions to suggest new owners or lint CODEOWNERS files to ensure accuracy.

This action was developed by the GitHub OSPO for our own use and developed in a way that we could open source it that it might be useful to you as well! If you want to know more about how we use it, reach out in an issue in this repository.

Support

If you need support using this project or have questions about it, please open up an issue in this repository. Requests made directly to GitHub staff or support team will be redirected here to open an issue. GitHub SLA's and support/services contracts do not apply to this repository.

OSPO GitHub Actions as a Whole

All feedback regarding our GitHub Actions, as a whole, should be communicated through issues on our github-ospo repository.

Use as a GitHub Action

1. Create a repository to host this GitHub Action or select an existing repository.
2. Select a best fit workflow file from the examples below.
3. Copy that example into your repository (from step 1) and into the proper directory for GitHub Actions: .github/workflows/ directory with the file extension .yml (ie. .github/workflows/cleanowners.yml)
4. Edit the values (ORGANIZATION, EXEMPT_REPOS) from the sample workflow with your information.
5. Also edit the value for GH_ENTERPRISE_URL if you are using a GitHub Server and not using github.com. For github.com users, don't put anything in here.
6. Update the value of GH_TOKEN. Do this by creating a GitHub API token with permissions to read the repository/organization and write issues or pull requests. Then take the value of the API token you just created, and create a repository secret where the name of the secret is GH_TOKEN and the value of the secret the API token. It just needs to match between when you create the secret name and when you refer to it in the workflow file.
7. Commit the workflow file to the default branch (often master or main)
8. Wait for the action to trigger based on the schedule entry or manually trigger the workflow as shown in the documentation.

Configuration

Below are the allowed configuration options:

Authentication

This action can be configured to authenticate with GitHub App Installation or Personal Access Token (PAT). If all configuration options are provided, the GitHub App Installation configuration has precedence. You can choose one of the following methods to authenticate:

GitHub App Installation

field	required	default	description
GH_APP_ID	True	""	GitHub Application ID. See documentation for more details.
GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID	True	""	GitHub Application Installation ID. See documentation for more details.
GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY	True	""	GitHub Application Private Key. See documentation for more details.
GITHUB_APP_ENTERPRISE_ONLY	False	false	Set this input to true if your app is created in GHE and communicates with GHE.

Personal Access Token (PAT)

field	required	default	description
GH_TOKEN	True	""	The GitHub Token used to scan the repository. Must have read access to all repository you are interested in scanning.

Other Configuration Options

field	required	default	description
GH_ENTERPRISE_URL	False	""	The GH_ENTERPRISE_URL is used to connect to an enterprise server instance of GitHub. github.com users should not enter anything here.
ORGANIZATION	Required to have ORGANIZATION or REPOSITORY		The name of the GitHub organization which you want this action to work from. ie. github.com/github would be github
REPOSITORY	Required to have ORGANIZATION or REPOSITORY		The name of the repository and organization which you want this action to work from. ie. github/cleanowners or a comma separated list of multiple repositories github/cleanowners,super-linter/super-linter
EXEMPT_REPOS	False	""	These repositories will be exempt from this action. ex: If my org is set to github then I might want to exempt a few of the repos but get the rest by setting EXEMPT_REPOS to github/cleanowners,github/contributors
DRY_RUN	False	False	If set to true, this action will not create any pull requests. It will only log the repositories that could have the CODEOWNERS file updated. This is useful for testing or discovering the scope of this issue in your organization.
ISSUE_REPORT	False	False	If set to true, this action will create an issue in the repository with the report on the repositories that had users removed from the CODEOWNERS file.

Example workflows

Basic

---
name: Weekly codeowners cleanup
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 1 * *"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  cleanowners:
    name: cleanowners
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - name: Run cleanowners action
        uses: github/cleanowners@v1
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
          ORGANIZATION: <YOUR_ORGANIZATION_GOES_HERE>

Advanced

---
name: Weekly codeowners cleanup
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 1 * *"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  cleanowners:
    name: cleanowners
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - name: Run cleanowners action
        uses: github/cleanowners@v1
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
          ORGANIZATION: <YOUR_ORGANIZATION_GOES_HERE>
          EXEMPT_REPOS: "org_name/repo_name_1, org_name/repo_name_2"
          ISSUE_REPORT: true
      - name: Create issue
        uses: peter-evans/create-issue-from-file@v5
        with:
          title: Cleanowners Report
          content-filepath: ./report.md
          assignees: <YOUR_GITHUB_HANDLE_HERE>
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Authenticating with a GitHub App and Installation

You can authenticate as a GitHub App Installation by providing additional environment variables. If GH_TOKEN is set alongside these GitHub App Installation variables, the GH_TOKEN will be ignored and not used.

---
name: Weekly codeowners cleanup via GitHub App
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 1 * *"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  cleanowners:
    name: cleanowners
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - name: Run cleanowners action
        uses: github/cleanowners@v1
        env:
          GH_APP_ID: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_ID }}
          GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID }}
          GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY }}
          ORGANIZATION: <YOUR_ORGANIZATION_GOES_HERE>
          EXEMPT_REPOS: "org_name/repo_name_1, org_name/repo_name_2"

Local usage without Docker

1. Make sure you have at least Python3.11 installed
2. Copy .env-example to .env
3. Fill out the .env file with a token from a user that has access to the organization (listed below). Tokens should have at least write:org and write:repository access.
4. Fill out the .env file with the configuration parameters you want to use
5. pip3 install -r requirements.txt
6. Run python3 ./cleanowners.py, which will output everything in the terminal

License

MIT

More OSPO Tools

Looking for more resources for your open source program office (OSPO)? Check out the github-ospo repository for a variety of tools designed to support your needs.