Move issues to discussions.

[thorwhalen]

Historically, I've been using issues in lieu of wikis: A place to jot down ideas, notes, design discussions, etc.

I use issues instead of wikis when, for example, I want to encourage comments, or simply because I can't use wikis (no wikis in private repos).

This won't change the private repos limitation, but as far as public ones go, it might be better to have a lot of the "issues" that we have be migrated to discussions. This is because it seems that a lot of metrics perceive open issues as open problems, where as I see it as open discussions.

Here's some code to start off with:

[thorwhalen]

from github import Github

def migrate_issue_to_discussion(issue_url, access_token=None):
    """
    Copies an issue and its comments to a new discussion in the same repository.
    
    :param issue_url: URL of the issue to migrate.
    :return: URL of the new discussion.
    """
    # Authenticate with the GitHub API using an access token
    access_token = access_token or os.environ.get('GITHUB_TOKEN', None)
    assert access_token, f"Need to specify a github access_token"
    g = Github(access_token)
    
    # Get the repository and issue objects from the issue URL
    repo_name = issue_url.split("/")[3:5]
    repo = g.get_repo("/".join(repo_name))
    issue_number = int(issue_url.split("/")[-1])
    issue = repo.get_issue(issue_number)
    
    # Create a new discussion with the same title and body as the issue
    discussion = repo.create_discussion(issue.title, body=issue.body)  # <--- THIS DOESN'T WORK
    
    # Copy all comments from the issue to the new discussion
    for comment in issue.get_comments():
        discussion.create_comment(comment.body)
    
    # Return the URL of the new discussion
    return discussion.html_url

Except that, I can't find any create_discussion method in a pygithub repo object.

Note that "discussion" objects are mentioned in pygithub docs. Just can't find a creation method for them.

The API exists though: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/teams/discussions?apiVersion=2022-11-28#create-a-discussion
So maybe we'll just use that directly.

[thorwhalen]

Found mentioned in the (commented out) "welcome to discussions" md:

➡️ You can convert issues to discussions either individually or bulk by labels. Looking at you, issues labeled “question” or “discussion”.

Google brought me to this. It says (and I verified):

• On GitHub.com, navigate to the main page of the repository or organization.
• Under your repository name, click Issues.
• In the list of issues, click the issue you'd like to convert.
• In the right margin of an issue, click Convert to discussion.
• Select the Choose a category drop-down menu, and click a category for your discussion.
• Click I understand, convert this issue to a discussion.

But how to convert issues in bulk?

[thorwhalen]

This answer says that the functionality doesn't exist anymore (and yet).

Maybe the only way is through the API (directly, not via pygithub).

[thorwhalen]

ChatGPT says:

Yes, it is possible to convert issues to discussions in bulk on GitHub using the GitHub API. The API provides a way to automate various tasks, including converting issues to discussions.

Here are the general steps to convert issues to discussions in bulk on GitHub:

Create a Personal Access Token (PAT) on GitHub with the necessary permissions. You will need the "repo" scope to access repositories and the "public_repo" scope if you want to access public repositories.

Use the GitHub API to retrieve a list of issues for the repository using the /repos/:owner/:repo/issues endpoint.

For each issue, use the /repos/:owner/:repo/issues/:issue_number/transfer endpoint to convert the issue to a discussion. This will transfer all the comments from the issue to the discussion.

Repeat step 3 for all the issues in the repository.

Here is an example of how to use the GitHub API to convert issues to discussions using Python:

import requests
import json

# Set the API endpoint and the access token
endpoint = "https://api.github.com"
access_token = "your_personal_access_token"

# Set the owner and repository name
owner = "your_github_username"
repo = "your_repository_name"

# Get the list of issues from the API
response = requests.get(f"{endpoint}/repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues", headers={"Authorization": f"token {access_token}"})
issues = json.loads(response.text)

# Loop through each issue and convert it to a discussion
for issue in issues:
    issue_number = issue["number"]
    payload = {"target": "discussions"}
    response = requests.post(f"{endpoint}/repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{issue_number}/transfer", headers={"Authorization": f"token {access_token}"}, json=payload)
    print(response.text)

Note: Before running this script, make sure to replace your_personal_access_token, your_github_username, and your_repository_name with your own values. Also, keep in mind that this script will permanently transfer all the issues in the repository to discussions, so use it with caution.