Comment Notes

Overview

This workflow writes PR comments as Git notes into a PR merge commit. This is useful to keep a backup of the conversation as well as having offline access to comments. It was inspired by Store Code Discussions in Git using Git Notes.

What are git notes?

"git notes" is a system of storing addition information about a commit. This information is tracked in a reference to a commit hash. It could be anything from personal comments, issue tracking references, or even test results. See official docs.

Note: Git notes never really "caught on". Many website, like GitHub, do not display "git notes".

Usage

1. Add a .github/workflows/comment-notes.yml as below.

   on:
     pull_request:
       types: [closed]
   
   jobs:
     comment-notes:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       name: 'comment-notes'
       if: github.event.pull_request.merged == true
       permissions:
         contents: write
         pull-requests: read
       steps:
         # Private repositories must use checkout action.
         - name: Checkout
           uses: actions/checkout@v4
   
         - uses: fregante/setup-git-user@v2
   
         - name: Commit notes
           id: commit-notes
           uses: tyler36/backlog-linker
           with:
             github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

   This action runs when a PR is closed. It reads the PR comments, and appends them as a git note.

2. Update your git remote to fetch the notes.

   git config --add remote.origin.fetch '+refs/notes/*:refs/notes/*'

3. Run git log to see the notes.

Templates

To override, the default comment template, update your workflow action:

with:
  github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
  comment-template: '- $comment.user.login: $comment.body'

The workflow will attempt to replace $comment items with the values from the comment object. For example, given the following comment object

{
  body: 'This works great!'
  user: {
    login: 'Dave'
  }
}

... - $comment.user.login: $comment.body template would become - Dave: This works great!.

Ignore Authors

If you would like to ignore certain author comments, like a bot or spammer, add the following configuration.

with:
  github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
  ignore-authors: 'spammer123,dependabot[bot]'

The ignore-authors string is split on comma, and matched against the comment's author.login string.

Contributions

Contributions are welcome. Contributions with tests will be prioritized.

Contributed by @tyler36