Assign fixes unable to assign to non-collaborators

[eparis]

If a person is not a kubernetes collaborator they are not able to be assigned. So the submit-queue prints lots of errors every 10 minutes like:

assign-fixes.go:90] Assigning 24568 to screeley44 (previously assigned to <nil>)
github.go:1217] Assigning PR# 24568  to screeley44
github.go:1222] Error assigning issue# 24568 to screeley44: PATCH https://api.github.com/repos/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/24568: 422 Validation Failed [{Resource:Issue Field:assignee Code:invalid}]

assign-fixes.go:90] Assigning 24877 to paralin (previously assigned to <nil>)
github.go:1217] Assigning PR# 24877  to paralin
github.go:1222] Error assigning issue# 24877 to paralin: PATCH https://api.github.com/repos/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/24877: 422 Validation Failed [{Resource:Issue Field:assignee Code:invalid}]

[eparis]

@asalkeld (much like I can't assign you to this issue)

[asalkeld]

Groan, that is disappointing 😞
Do you want me to remove the bot, or is it still useful for collaborators?

[eparis]

The UsersWithAccess() github function might be useful here? Actually, we no longer have a need to distinguish read/write, so maybe get rid of that helper and just expose fetchAllCollaborators() and use that?

I'd like it if we posted a comment in an issue stating why we assigned it to the person in question.

If a user cannot be assigned, post a comment in the issue indicating we wanted to assign it to that person. (And from then on you need to check for the comment and not comment a second time)

[asalkeld]

@eparis one of the main use-cases I was trying to solve was "I want to be able to search for bugs that no one is working on". I can't find a way to search for issues that don't have PR that reference them, so maybe I could change the bot to simply add a label "state/pr-posted". This would make it easy to do this search like this:

is:issue is:open label:kind/bug -label:state/pr-posted no:assignee

The second part is which developer is working on it. For this I could do as you suggested:
for contributor:

Assigned to @eparis (by mungegithub)

For non-contributor:

Claimed by @asalkeld (by mungegithub)

This means that I could also put the "Claimed by ..." text in myself.

I'll start on this now, let me know if this seems reasonable.

[asalkeld]

So on the ML there was a suggestion of "pr-pending" and using a dummy assignee. Is there a bot user that we can use for this purpose?

[asalkeld]

I have added the ability to assign issues to a proxy contributor (called "k8s-almost-a-contributor") and removed the labelling. Next is to bikeshed on a better user name, then we need to create this user and add it as a contributor...

[foxish]

This issue was moved to kubernetes/test-infra#1629

[duglin]

@asalkeld said:

I have added the ability to assign issues to a proxy contributor (called "k8s-almost-a-contributor") and removed the labelling.

is this done via a bot? Meaning, can a non-maintainer add some comment to the issue to indicate they want to work on it?

[saadi123]

Hi,

Sorry if the comment is unrelated but I don't know how to assign it to somebody from my main issues window. No name shows up in the assignee field when I try to assign it to someone.

The issue is this one: saadi123/pomodoro_clock#2

Can someone please help.

Thank you.