Option stale-issue-message required?

[jasongrout]

Describe your issue

We have omitted the stale-issue-message option (in fact, we still have skip-stale-issue-message set, but that seems ignored now). According to the docs at https://github.com/actions/stale#stale-issue-message:

You can skip the comment sending by omitting the option or by passing an empty string.

So it seems since we have omitted the stale-issue-message parameter, we should be fine - issues should be marked stale without a comment. However, in our logs, we see https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/runs/2994705101?check_suite_focus=true#step:2:3995 :

[#5869] Skipping this issue because it should be marked as stale based on the option days-before-stale (​https://github.com/actions/stale#days-before-stale​) (30) but the option stale-issue-message (​https://github.com/actions/stale#stale-issue-message​) is not set

and the relevant issue is not marked stale. Is giving a stale-issue-message mandatory now, with an empty string signifying no message?

Your stale action configuration

https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/blob/cd7ac23f738c9a8792bbb76a256e84a82535446c/.github/workflows/answered.yml

name: 'Close answered issues'
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '30 1 * * *'

jobs:
  stale:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/stale@v3
        with:
          skip-stale-issue-message: true
          days-before-stale: 30
          days-before-close: 7
          stale-issue-label: 'status:Closing as Answered'
          only-issue-labels: 'status:Answered'

Further context

[jasongrout]

Oh, I think I'm getting confused between unreleased master, and what is necessary in v3. It seems in v3 I need to give both the skip-stale-issue-message and a blank message? But in v4 I won't need to specify either to get no comment?

[C0ZEN]

@jasongrout indeed, the default branch is main which provide the actual state of the action including unreleased features.
If you use the v3, you need to combine this option with the skip-stale-issue-message (you can check the doc from the v3 tag https://github.com/actions/stale/tree/v3).

For the next major (v4) or the current main, if the option is empty, no message will be sent.

stale/src/classes/issues-processor.ts

Lines 213 to 215 in 678bfc7

	const skipMessage = issue.isPullRequest
	? this.options.stalePrMessage.length === 0
	: this.options.staleIssueMessage.length === 0;

However, since there is a default value

stale/action.yml

Lines 9 to 11 in 678bfc7

	stale-issue-message:
	description: 'The message to post on the issue when tagging it. If none provided, will not mark issues stale.'
	required: false

I think that the documentation should not mention that omitting will not send a message.
I can provide an update of the doc for this.

[jasongrout]

Thanks!

[jasongrout]

Adding stale-issue-message: '' still didn't let skipping work for us (same error), but according to DynamoDS/Dynamo@8ac994c#diff-8162bb3b3d4da55f30fcbb603b5d630b21b397777a6a42eff0e0fba30bc746a1R15, it looks like stale-issue-message needs to be set to a nonempty value for the skipping to work in v3?

[C0ZEN]

@jasongrout sorry it's hard to tell.
What do you think about using the main branch until the v4 is released?
Don't know why it's taking so much time, and it's obviously not a good practice but mostly no new feature or breaking change will be added until the v4 is out I suppose, so it's OK ish.
WDYT?

[C0ZEN]

The PR is ready.
Nice catch :)

[jasongrout]

No problem. For now I did a stale-issue-message of '.', like in the link I posted. Thanks for fixing things in v3, we really appreciate how this action helps us manage answered issues!