GitLab Triage Project

This project allows to automate triaging of issues and merge requests for GitLab projects or groups.

gitlab-triage gem

Abstract

The gitlab-triage gem aims to enable project managers and maintainers to automatically triage Issues and Merge Requests in GitLab projects or groups based on defined policies.

See Running locally for how to specify a project or a group.

What is a triage policy?

Triage policies are defined on a resource level basis, resources being:

• Issues
• Merge Requests

Each policy can declare a number of conditions that must all be satisfied before a number of actions are carried out.

Summary policies are special policies that join multiple policies together to create a summary issue with all the sub-policies' summaries, see Summary policies.

Defining a policy

Policies are defined in a policy file (by default ./.triage-policies.yml). The format of the file is YAML.

Note: You can use the --init option to add an example .triage-policies.yml file to your project.

Select which resource to add the policy to:

• issues
• merge_requests

And create an array of rules to define your policies:

For example:

resource_rules:
  issues:
    rules:
      - name: My policy
        conditions:
          date:
            attribute: updated_at
            condition: older_than
            interval_type: days
            interval: 5
          state: opened
          labels:
            - None
        limits:
          most_recent: 50
        actions:
          labels:
            - needs attention
          mention:
            - markglenfletcher
          move: gitlab-org/backlog
          comment: |
            {{author}} This issue is unlabelled after 5 days. It needs attention. Please take care of this before the end of #{2.days.from_now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')}
          summarize:
            destination: gitlab-org/gitlab-triage
            title: |
              #{resource[:type].capitalize} require labels
            item: |
              - [ ] [{{title}}]({{web_url}}) {{labels}}
            redact_confidential_resources: false
            summary: |
              The following issues require labels:

              {{items}}

              Please take care of them before the end of #{7.days.from_now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')}

              /label ~"needs attention"
  merge_requests:
    rules:
      - name: My policy
        conditions:
          state: opened
          labels:
            - None
        limits:
          most_recent: 50
        actions:
          labels:
            - needs attention
          comment_type: thread
          comment: |
            {{author}} This issue is unlabelled. Please add one or more labels.

Real world example

We're enforcing multiple polices with pipeline schedules at triage-ops, where we're also extensively utilizing the plugins system.

Fields

A policy consists of the following fields:

• Name field
• Conditions field
• Limits field
• Actions field

Name field

The name field is used to describe the purpose of the individual policy.

Example:

name: Policy name

Conditions field

Used to declare a condition that must be satisfied by a resource before actions will be taken.

Available condition types:

• date condition
• milestone condition
• state condition
• upvotes condition
• labels condition
• forbidden_labels condition
• no_additional_labels condition
• author_member condition
• assignee_member condition
• source_branch condition
• target_branch condition
• ruby condition

Date condition

Accepts a hash of fields.

Field	Type	Values	Required
attribute	string	created_at, updated_at, merged_at	yes
condition	string	older_than, newer_than	yes
interval_type	string	days, weeks, months, years	yes
interval	integer	integer	yes

Note: merged_at only works on merge requests.

Example:

conditions:
  date:
    attribute: updated_at
    condition: older_than
    interval_type: months
    interval: 12

Milestone condition

Accepts the name of a milestone to filter upon.

Example:

conditions:
  milestone: v1

State condition

Accepts a string.

State	Type	Value
Closed issues	string	closed
Open issues	string	opened
Merged merge requests	string	merged

Example:

conditions:
  state: opened

Upvotes condition

Accepts a hash of fields.

Field	Type	Values	Required
attribute	string	upvotes, downvotes	yes
condition	string	less_than, greater_than	yes
threshold	integer	integer	yes

Example:

conditions:
  upvotes:
    attribute: upvotes
    condition: less_than
    threshold: 10

Labels condition

Accepts an array of strings. Each element in the array represents the name of a label to filter on.

Note: All specified labels must be present on the resource for the condition to be satisfied

Example:

conditions:
  labels:
    - feature proposal

Predefined special label names

Basing on the issues API, there are two special predefined label names we can use here:

• None: This indicates that no labels were present
• Any: This indicates that any labels were presented

Example:

conditions:
  labels:
    - None

Labels brace expansion

We could expand the labels by using brace expansion, which is a pattern surrounded by using braces: {}. For now, we support 2 kinds of brace expansion:

1. List: { apple, orange }
2. Sequence: {1..4}

Note:

• Spaces around the items are ignored.
• Do not rely on the expansion ordering. This is subject to change.

List

The name of a label can contain a list of items, written like { apple, orange }. For each item, the rule will be duplicated with the new label name.

Example:

resource_rules:
  issues:
    rules:
      - name: Add missing ~Quality label
        conditions:
          labels:
            - Quality:test-{ gap, infra }
        actions:
          labels:
            - Quality

Which will be expanded into:

resource_rules:
  issues:
    rules:
      - name: Add missing ~Quality label
        conditions:
          labels:
            - Quality:test-gap
        actions:
          labels:
            - Quality

      - name: Add missing ~Quality label
        conditions:
          labels:
            - Quality:test-infra
        actions:
          labels:
            - Quality

Note: If you want to define a full label expansion, you'll need to force string or quote string because otherwise it won't be considered a string due to the YAML parser. For example, we can quote the expression like '{ apple, orange }', which will create 2 rules, for the two specified labels.

Sequence

The name of a label can contain one or more sequence conditions, written like {0..9}, which means 0, 1, 2, and so on up to 9. For each number, the rule will be duplicated with the new label name.

Example:

resource_rules:
  issues:
    rules:
      - name: Add missing ~"missed\-deliverable" label
        conditions:
          labels:
            - missed:{10..11}.{0..1}
            - deliverable
        actions:
          labels:
            - missed deliverable

Which will be expanded into:

resource_rules:
  issues:
    rules:
      - name: Add missing ~"missed\-deliverable" label
        conditions:
          labels:
            - missed:10.0
            - deliverable
        actions:
          labels:
            - missed deliverable

      - name: Add missing ~"missed\-deliverable" label
        conditions:
          labels:
            - missed:10.1
            - deliverable
        actions:
          labels:
            - missed deliverable

      - name: Add missing ~"missed\-deliverable" label
        conditions:
          labels:
            - missed:11.0
            - deliverable
        actions:
          labels:
            - missed deliverable

      - name: Add missing ~"missed\-deliverable" label
        conditions:
          labels:
            - missed:11.1
            - deliverable
        actions:
          labels:
            - missed deliverable

Forbidden labels condition

Accepts an array of strings. Each element in the array represents the name of a label to filter on.

Note: All specified labels must be absent on the resource for the condition to be satisfied

Example:

conditions:
  forbidden_labels:
    - awaiting feedback

No additional labels condition

Accepts a boolean. If true the resource cannot have more labels than those specified by the labels condition.

Example:

conditions:
  labels:
    - feature proposal
  no_additional_labels: true

Author Member condition

This condition determines whether the author of a resource is a member of the specified group or project.

This is useful for determining whether Issues or Merge Requests have been raised by a Community Contributor.

Accepts a hash of fields.

Field	Type	Values	Required
source	string	group, project	yes
condition	string	member_of, not_member_of	yes
source_id	integer or string	gitlab-org/gitlab	yes

Example:

conditions:
  author_member:
    source: group
    condition: not_member_of
    source_id: 9970

Assignee member condition

This condition determines whether the assignee of a resource is a member of the specified group or project.

Accepts a hash of fields.

Field	Type	Values	Required
source	string	group, project	yes
condition	string	member_of, not_member_of	yes
source_id	integer or string	gitlab-org/gitlab	yes

Example:

conditions:
  assignee_member:
    source: group
    condition: not_member_of
    source_id: 9970

Source branch condition

Accepts the name of a source branch to filter upon.

Example:

conditions:
  source_branch: 'feature-branch'

Target branch condition

Accepts the name of a target branch to filter upon.

Example:

conditions:
  target_branch: 'master'

Ruby condition

This condition allows users to write a Ruby expression to be evaluated for each resource. If it evaluates to a truthy value, it satisfies the condition. If it evaluates to a falsey value, it does not satisfy the condition.

Accepts a string as the Ruby expression.

Example:

conditions:
  ruby: Date.today > milestone.succ.start_date

In the above example, this describes that we want to act on the resources which passed the next active milestone's starting date.

Here milestone will return a Gitlab::Triage::Resource::Milestone object, representing the milestone of the questioning resource. Milestone#succ would return the next active milestone, based on the start_date of all milestones along with the representing milestone. If the milestone was coming from a project, then it's based on all active milestones in that project. If the milestone was coming from a group, then it's based on all active milestones in the group.

If we also want to handle some edge cases, for example, a resource might not have a milestone, and a milestone might not be active, and there might not have a next milestone. We could instead write something like:

conditions:
  ruby: milestone&.active? && milestone&.succ && Date.today > milestone.succ.start_date

This will make it only act on resources which have active milestones and there exists next milestone which has already started.

See Ruby expression API for the list of currently available API.

Limits field

Limits restrict the number of resources on which an action is carried out. They can be useful when combined with conditions that return a large number of resources. For example, if the conditions are satisfied by thousands of issues a limit can be configured to process only fifty of them to avoid making an overwhelming number of changes at once.

Accepts a key and value pair where the key is most_recent or oldestand the value is the number of resources to act on. The following table outlines how each key affects the sorting and order of resources that it limits.

Name / Key	Sorted by	Order
most_recent	created_at	descending
oldest	created_at	ascending

Example:

limits:
  most_recent: 50

Actions field

Used to declare an action to be carried out on a resource if all conditions are satisfied.

Available action types:

• labels action
• remove_labels action
• status action
• mention action
• move action
• comment action
• comment_type action option
• summarize action

Labels action

Adds a number of labels to the resource.

Accepts an array of strings. Each element is the name of a label to add.

Example:

actions:
  labels:
    - feature proposal
    - awaiting feedback

Remove labels action

Removes a number of labels from the resource.

Accepts an array of strings. Each element is the name of a label to remove.

Example:

actions:
  remove_labels:
    - feature proposal
    - awaiting feedback

Status action

Changes the status of the resource.

Accepts a string.

State transition	Type	Value
Close the resource	string	close
Reopen the resource	string	reopen

Example:

actions:
  status: close

Mention action

Mentions a number of users.

Accepts an array of strings. Each element is the username of a user to mention.

Example:

actions:
  mention:
    - rymai
    - markglenfletcher

Move action

Moves an issue (merge request is not supported yet) to the specified project.

Accepts a string containing the target project path.

Example:

actions:
  move: target/project_path

Comment action

Adds a comment to the resource.

Accepts a string, and placeholders. Placeholders should be wrapped in double curly braces, e.g. {{author}}.

The following placeholders are supported:

• created_at: the resource's creation date
• updated_at: the resource's last update date
• closed_at: the resource's closed date (if applicable)
• merged_at: the resource's merged date (if applicable)
• state: the resources's current state: opened, closed, merged
• author: the username of the resource's author as @user1
• assignee: the username of the resource's assignee as @user1
• assignees: the usernames of the resource's assignees as @user1, @user2
• closed_by: the user that closed the resource as @user1 (if applicable)
• merged_by: the user that merged the resource as @user1 (if applicable)
• milestone: the resource's current milestone
• labels: the resource's labels as ~label1, ~label2
• upvotes: the resources's upvotes count
• downvotes: the resources's downvotes count
• title: the resource's title
• web_url: the web URL pointing to the resource
• type: the type of the resources. For now, only issues and merge_requests are supported.

If the resource doesn't respond to the placeholder, or if the field is nil, the placeholder is not replaced.

Example without placeholders:

actions:
  comment: |
    Closing this issue automatically

Example with placeholders:

actions:
  comment: |
    {{author}} Are you still interested in finishing this merge request?

Comment type action option

Determines the type of comment to be added to the resource.

The following comment types are supported:

• comment (default): creates a regular comment on the resource
• thread: starts a resolvable thread (discussion) on the resource

For merge requests, if comment_type is set to thread, we can also configure that all threads should be resolved before merging, therefore this comment can prevent it from merging.

Example:

actions:
  comment_type: thread
  comment: |
    {{author}} Are you still interested in finishing this merge request?

Harnessing Quick Actions

GitLab's quick actions feature is available in Core. All of the operations supported by executing a quick action can be carried out via the comment action.

If GitLab triage does not support an operation natively, it may be possible via a quick action in a comment.

For example:

• Flagging an issue as confidential
• Locking issue discussion

resource_rules:
  issues:
    rules:
      - name: Mark bugs as confidential
        conditions:
          state: opened
          ruby: !resource[:confidential]
          labels:
            - bug
        actions:
          comment: |
            /confidential

Ruby expression

The comment can also contain Ruby expression, using Ruby's own string interpolation syntax: #{ expression }. This gives you the most flexibility. Suppose you want to mention the next active milestone relative to the one associated with the resource, you can write:

actions:
  comment: |
    Please move this to %"#{milestone.succ.title}".

See Ruby expression API for the list of currently available API.

Note: If you get a syntax error due to stray braces ({ or }), use \ to escape it. For example:

actions:
 comment: |
   If \} comes first and/or following \{, you'll need to escape them. If it's just { wrapping something } then you don't need to, but it's also fine to escape them like \{ this \} if you prefer.

Summarize action

Generates an issue summarizing what was triaged.

Accepts a hash of fields.

Field	Type	Description	Required	Placeholders	Ruby expression	Default
title	string	The title of the generated issue	yes	yes	no
destination	integer or string	The project ID or path to create the generated issue in	no	no	no	source project
item	string	Template representing each triaged resource	no	yes	yes
summary	string	The description of the generated issue	no	Only {{title}}, {{items}}, {{type}}	yes
redact_confidential_resources	boolean	Whether redact fields for confidential resources	no	no	no	true

The following placeholders are supported for summary:

• title: The title of the generated issue
• items: Concatenated markdown separated by a newline for each item
• type: The resource type for the summary. For now issues or merge_requests

Note:

• Both item and summary fields act like a comment action, therefore Ruby expression is supported.
• Placeholders work regularly for item, but for summary only {{title}}, {{items}}, {{type}} are supported because it's not tied to a particular resource like the comment action.
• No issues will be created if:
  • the specific policy doesn't yield any resources; or
  • the source type is a group and destination is not set.
• redact_confidential_resources defaults to true, so fields on confidential resources will be converted to (confidential) except for {{web_url}}. Setting it to false will reveal the confidential fields. This will be useful if the summary is confidential itself (not implemented yet), or if we're posting to another private project (not implemented yet).

Example:

resource_rules:
  issues:
    rules:
      - name: Issues require labels
        limits:
          most_recent: 15
        actions:
          summarize:
            title: |
              #{resource[:type].capitalize} require labels
            item: |
              - [ ] [{{title}}]({{web_url}}) {{labels}}
            summary: |
              The following {{type}} require labels:

              {{items}}

              Please take care of them before the end of #{7.days.from_now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')}

              /label ~"needs attention"

Which could generate an issue like:

• Title:

  Issues require labels
  

• Description:

  The following issues require labels:
  
  - [ ] [An example issue](http://example.com/group/project/issues/1) ~"label A", ~"label B"
  - [ ] [Another issue](http://example.com/group/project/issues/2) ~"label B", ~"label C"
  
  Please take care of them before the end of 2000-01-01
  
  /label ~"needs attention"
  

Summary policies

Summary policies are special policies that join multiple rule policies together to create a summary issue with all the sub-policies' summaries. They have the same structure as Rule policies that define actions.summarize.

One key difference is that the {{items}} placeholder represents the array of sub-policies' summary.

Note that only the summarize keys in the sub-policies' actions is used. Any other keys (e.g. mention, comment, labels etc.) are ignored.

You can define such policy as follows:

resource_rules:
  issues:
    summaries:
      - name: Newest and oldest issues summary
        actions:
          summarize:
            title: "Newest and oldest {{type}} summary"
            summary: |
              Please triage the following {{type}}:

              {{items}}

              Please take care of them before the end of #{7.days.from_now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')}

              /label ~"needs attention"
        rules:
          - name: New issues
            conditions:
              state: opened
            limits:
              most_recent: 2
            actions:
              summarize:
                item: "- [ ] [{{title}}]({{web_url}}) {{labels}}"
                summary: |
                  Please triage the following new {{type}}:

                  {{items}}
          - name: Old issues
            conditions:
              state: opened
            limits:
              oldest: 2
            actions:
              summarize:
                item: "- [ ] [{{title}}]({{web_url}}) {{labels}}"
                summary: |
                  Please triage the following old {{type}}:

                  {{items}}

Which could generate an issue like:

• Title:

  Newest and oldest issues summary
  

• Description:

  Please triage the following issues:
  
  Please triage the following new issues:
  
  - [ ] [A new issue](http://example.com/group/project/issues/4)
  - [ ] [Another new issue](http://example.com/group/project/issues/3) ~"label B", ~"label C"
  
  Please triage the following old issues:
  
  - [ ] [An old issue](http://example.com/group/project/issues/1) ~"label A", ~"label B"
  - [ ] [Another old issue](http://example.com/group/project/issues/2) ~"label C"
  
  Please take care of them before the end of 2000-01-01
  
  /label ~"needs attention"
  

Note: If a specific policy doesn't yield any resources, it will not generate the corresponding description. If all policies yield no resources, then no issues will be created.

Ruby expression API

Here's a list of currently available Ruby expression API:

Methods for Issue and MergeRequest (the context)

Name	Return type	Description
resource	Hash	The hash containing the raw data of the resource
author	String	The username of the resource author
milestone	Milestone	The milestone attached to the resource
labels	[Label]	A list of labels, having only names
labels_with_details	[Label]	A list of labels which has more information loaded from another API request
labels_chronologically	[Label]	Same as labels_with_details but sorted chronologically
label_events	[LabelEvent]	A list of label events on the resource
instance_version	InstanceVersion	The version for the GitLab instance we're triaging with
project_path	String	The path with namespace to the issues or merge requests project
full_resource_reference	String	A full reference incuding project path to the issue or merge request

Methods for MergeRequest (merge request context)

Method	Return type	Description
first_contribution?	Boolean	true if it's the author's first contribution to the project; false otherwise. This API requires an additional API request for the merge request, thus would be slower.

Methods for Milestone

Method	Return type	Description
id	Integer	The id of the milestone
iid	Integer	The iid of the milestone
project_id	Integer	The project id of the milestone if available
group_id	Integer	The group id of the milestone if available
title	String	The title of the milestone
description	String	The description of the milestone
state	String	The state of the milestone. Could be active or closed
due_date	Date	The due date of the milestone. Could be nil
start_date	Date	The start date of the milestone. Could be nil
updated_at	Time	The updated timestamp of the milestone
created_at	Time	The created timestamp of the milestone
succ	Milestone	The next active milestone beside this milestone
active?	Boolean	true if state is active; false otherwise
closed?	Boolean	true if state is closed; false otherwise
started?	Boolean	true if start_date exists and in the past; false otherwise
expired?	Boolean	true if due_date exists and in the past; false otherwise
in_progress?	Boolean	true if started? and !expired; false otherwise

Methods for Label

Method	Return type	Description
id	Integer	The id of the label
project_id	Integer	The project id of the label if available
group_id	Integer	The group id of the label if available
name	String	The name of the label
description	String	The description of the label
color	String	The color of the label in RGB
priority	Integer	The priority of the label
added_at	Time	When the label was added to the resource

Methods for LabelEvent

Method	Return type	Description
id	Integer	The id of the label event
resource_type	String	The resource type of the event. Could be Issue or MergeRequest
resource_id	Integer	The id of the resource
action	String	The action of the event. Could be add or remove
created_at	Time	When the event happened

Methods for InstanceVersion

Method	Return type	Description
version	String	The full string of version. e.g. 11.3.0-rc11-ee
version_short	String	The short string of version. e.g. 11.3
revision	String	The revision of GitLab. e.g. 231b0c7

Installation

gem install gitlab-triage

Usage

gitlab-triage --help

Will show:

Usage: gitlab-triage [options]

    -n, --dry-run                    Don't actually update anything, just print
    -f, --policies-file [string]     A valid policies YML file
    -s, --source [type]              The source type between [ projects or groups ], default value: projects
    -i, --source-id [string]         Source ID or path
    -p, --project-id [string]        [Deprecated] A project ID or path, please use `--source-id`
    -t, --token [string]             A valid API token
    -H, --host-url [string]          A valid host url
    -r, --require [string]           Require a file before performing
    -d, --debug                      Print debug information
    -h, --help                       Print help message
        --all-projects               Process all projects visible to `--token`
        --init                       Initialize the project with a policy file
        --init-ci                    Initialize the project with a .gitlab-ci.yml file

Running locally

Triaging against a specific project:

gitlab-triage --dry-run --token $API_TOKEN --source-id gitlab-org/triage

Triaging against a whole group:

gitlab-triage --dry-run --token $API_TOKEN --source-id gitlab-org --source groups

Triaging against an entire instance:

gitlab-triage --dry-run --token $API_TOKEN --all-projects

Note: The --all-projects option will process all resources for all projects visible to the specified $API_TOKEN

Running on GitLab CI pipeline

You can enforce policies using a scheduled pipeline:

run:triage:triage:
  stage: triage
  script:
    - gem install gitlab-triage
    - gitlab-triage --token $API_TOKEN --source-id $CI_PROJECT_PATH
  only:
    - schedules

Note: You can use the --init-ci option to add an example .gitlab-ci.yml file to your project

Can I use gitlab-triage for my self-hosted GitLab instance?

Yes, you can override the host url using the following options:

CLI

gitlab-triage --dry-run --token $API_TOKEN --source-id gitlab-org/triage --host-url https://gitlab.host.com

Policy file

host_url: https://gitlab.host.com
resource_rules:

Can I customize?

You can take the advantage of command line option -r or --require to load a Ruby file before performing the actions. This allows you to do whatever you want. For example, you can put this in a file like my_plugin.rb:

module MyPlugin
  def has_severity_label?
    labels.grep(/^S\d+$/).any?
  end

  def has_priority_label?
    labels.grep(/^P\d+$/).any?
  end

  def labels
    resource[:labels]
  end
end

Gitlab::Triage::Resource::Context.include MyPlugin

And then run it with:

gitlab-triage -r ./my_plugin.rb --token $API_TOKEN --source-id gitlab-org/triage

This allows you to use has_severity_label? in the Ruby condition:

resource_rules:
  issues:
    rules:
      - name: Apply default severity or priority labels
        conditions:
          ruby: |
            !has_severity_label? || !has_priority_label?
        actions:
          comment: |
            #{'/label ~S3' unless has_severity_label?}
            #{'/label ~P3' unless has_priority_label?}

Contributing

Please refer to the Contributing Guide.

Release Process

Please refer to the Release Process.