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Do you want to receive e-mail notifications about new issues, pull requests, discussions, releases, tags, stargazers, & forks on your GitHub repositories? Of course you do — but turning on e-mail notifications in GitHub for repositories you're watching will mean you get an e-mail for every comment on every issue, which is a bit too much. reponews aims for a happy medium: only e-mailing you about new issues and similar activity — not about comments — and only on repositories of your choice. Simply set it up to run under cron or another job scheduler (sold separately), point it at a compatible e-mail sending service (also sold separately), and you'll get periodic e-mails listing new events.

Installation & Setup

reponews requires Python 3.8 or higher. Just use pip for Python 3 (You have pip, right?) to install reponews and its dependencies:

python3 -m pip install reponews

Before running reponews for the first time, you need to acquire a GitHub personal access token for fetching details about your repositories via the GitHub GraphQL API, and you need to create a configuration file containing, at a minimum:

• The access token or the path to a file containing it
• The e-mail address that reponews should send its reports to
• Details on how to send those e-mails

An example configuration file, for sending e-mails to [email protected] with the sendmail command:

[reponews]
recipient = "[email protected]"
auth-token = "..."

[outgoing]
method = "command"
command = ["sendmail", "-i", "-t"]

See "Configuration" below for details.

Example

An example of the sort of e-mail that reponews might send you:

[luser/my-repo] ISSUE #42: I found a bug (@bug-finder)
<https://github.com/luser/my-repo/issues/42>

@bug-fixer forked luser/my-repo
<https://github.com/bug.fixer/my-repo>

[luser/my-repo] PR #43: I fixed that bug (@bug-fixer)
<https://github.com/luser/my-repo/pull/43>

★ @repo-fan starred orgcorp/bigrepo

[orgcorp/bigrepo] DISCUSSION #123: How do I use this? (@confused-user)
<https://github.com/orgcorp/bigrepo/discussions/123>

[theteam/theproject] RELEASE v1.0a1 [prerelease]: v1 Preview (@github-actions[bot])
<https://github.com/theteam/theproject/releases/tag/v1.0a1>
> We're gearing up for the first full release!  Here are some changes you'll find:
>
> * Added a feature
> * Fixed a bug

Now tracking repository luser/brand-new-repo
<https://github.com/luser/brand-new-repo>
> This is the repository description.

No longer tracking repository tmprepos/deleted-repo

Repository renamed: team-member/new-project → theteam/new-project

Usage

reponews [<options>]

The reponews command queries GitHub's GraphQL API for new issues, pull requests, discussions, releases, tags, stargazers, and/or forks on the repositories specified in its configuration file (by default, all repositories affiliated with the authenticated user) and composes & sends an e-mail listing the events in chronological order. Also included in the report are notifications about newly-tracked and -untracked repositories and renamed repositories. If there is no new activity, no e-mail is sent.

"New" activity is, in the general case, anything that has happened since the last time reponews was successfully run (specifically, since the last time the state file was updated). The first time reponews is run, it merely reports all the repositories that it is now tracking. If reponews stops tracking a repository (usually because the repository listing in the config file was edited) and then starts tracking it again, it will not pick up where it left off; instead, when it first starts tracking the repository again, it will mark down that point in time and afterwards only report events occurring after it. Similar behavior occurs if reponews stops tracking a certain type of activity and then starts tracking it again.

Options

-c PATH, --config PATH Specify the configuration file to use. See

"Configuration" below for the default config file location.

--dump-repos Instead of fetching repository activity, dump

the set of tracked repositories and their configured activity preferences as a JSON document

-E FILE, --env FILE Load environment variables from the given

.env file. By default, environment variables are loaded from the first file named ".env" found by searching from the current directory upwards.

-l LEVEL, --log-level LEVEL Set the log level to the given value. Possible

values are "CRITICAL", "ERROR", "WARNING", "INFO", "DEBUG" (all case-insensitive) and their Python integer equivalents. [default: WARNING]

--print Cause reponews to output the e-mail (as a

MIME document) instead of sending it

--print-body Cause reponews to output the body of the

e-mail instead of sending it

--save, --no-save Update/do not update the state file on

successful completion [default: --save]

Configuration

reponews is configured via a TOML file whose default location depends on your OS:

Linux	~/.config/reponews/config.toml or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/reponews/config.toml
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/reponews/config.toml
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\jwodder\reponews\config.toml

This TOML file must contain a [reponews] table with the following keys & subtables (all of which are optional unless stated otherwise). Unknown keys result in an error.

recipient : e-mail address

[Required when --print-body is not given] The e-mail address to which reponews should send its reports. This can be either a plain e-mail address (e.g., "[email protected]") or a display name with an address in angle brackets (e.g., "Madam E <[email protected]>"). Note that, if the display name contains any punctuation, it needs to be enclosed in double quotes, which then need to be escaped for use in the TOML string, e.g., "\"Joe Q. Recipient\" <[email protected]>".

sender : e-mail address

The From: address to put on reponews's e-mails; specified the same way as recipient. If sender is not specified, it is assumed that the e-mail sending mechanism will automatically fill in the From: address appropriately.

subject : string

The subject to apply to reponews's e-mails; defaults to "[reponews] New activity on your GitHub repositories".

auth-token : string

The GitHub access token to use for interacting with the GitHub API. If auth-token is not set, the token will be read from the file specified by auth-token-file. If neither key is set, the GitHub token is looked up via the following sources, in order:

• The GH_TOKEN and GITHUB_TOKEN environment variables (possibly set via the .env file; see the --env option under "Options" above)
• The gh command, if installed
• The hub command's configuration file
• The hub.oauthtoken Git config option

auth-token-file : path

The path to a file containing the GitHub access token to use for interacting with the GitHub API. The file must contain only the token and possibly leading and/or trailing whitespace.

The path may start with a tilde (~) to indicate a file in the user's home directory. A relative path will be resolved relative to the directory containing the config file.

state-file : path

The path to the file where reponews will store repository activity state, used to determine the cutoff point for new activity. The path may start with a tilde (~) to indicate a file in the user's home directory. A relative path will be resolved relative to the directory containing the config file.

The default location for the state file depends on your OS:

Linux	~/.local/state/reponews/state.json or $XDG_STATE_HOME/reponews/state.json
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/reponews/state.json
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\jwodder\reponews\state.json

api-url : URL

The GraphQL endpoint to query; defaults to "https://api.github.com/graphql"

activity : table

A subtable describing what types of repository activity to fetch & track. This table may contain the following keys:

issues : boolean

Whether to report new issues in tracked repositories; defaults to true

pull-requests : boolean

Whether to report new pull requests in tracked repositories; defaults to true

discussions : boolean

Whether to report new discussions in tracked repositories; defaults to true

releases : boolean

Whether to report new releases in tracked repositories; defaults to true

prereleases : boolean

Whether to report new prereleases in tracked repositories; defaults to true. This setting only has an effect when releases is true.

drafts : boolean

Whether to report new draft releases in tracked repositories; defaults to true. This setting only has an effect when releases is true.

Note that, if reponews sees a release while it's in a draft state (even if the draft is not reported), and then, on a later run, the release has been published, the release will not be reported on the later run, regardless of the value of drafts.

tags : boolean

Whether to report new tags in tracked repositories; defaults to true

released-tags : boolean

This setting controls how to handle tags that are also made into releases when both tags and releases are being tracked. If true, such tags are reported separately from the releases. If false (the default), such tags are not reported.

stars : boolean

Whether to report new stargazers for tracked repositories; defaults to true

forks : boolean

Whether to report new forks of tracked repositories; defaults to true

my-activity : boolean

When false (the default), activity performed by the authenticated user is not reported.

affiliated : table

A subtable describing what types of repository activity to fetch & track for repositories affiliated with the authenticated user. The table's keys are the same as the boolean keys of [reponews.activity].

repo : table

A subtable describing what types of repository activity to fetch & track for specific repositories or repositories belonging to a given user/organization. The keys of the subtable must be of the form "owner/name" (for a specific repository) or "owner/*" (for all repositories belonging to a given user/organization), and the values must be subtables with the same boolean keys as [reponews.activity].

By default, all repositories and repository owners listed as keys in [reponews.activity.repo] will be tracked by reponews just as if they were listed under reponews.repos.include (see below). This can be disabled for a single key by setting include = false in the key's subtable.

When determining the activity to fetch & track for a repository owner/name, each setting is looked up in the relevant tables in the following order, from highest precedence to lowest precedence:

1. [reponews.activity.repo."owner/name"]
2. [reponews.activity.repo."owner/*"]
3. [reponews.activity.affiliated] (if the repository is affiliated with the authenticated user)
4. [reponews.activity]

repos : table

A subtable describing what repositories to track. This table may contain the following keys:

affiliations : list of strings

A list of repository affiliations describing which repositories associated with the authenticated user should be automatically tracked. The affiliations are "OWNER" (for tracking repositories that the user owns), "ORGANIZATION_MEMBER" (for tracking repositories belonging to an organization of which the user is a member), and "COLLABORATOR" (for tracking repositories to which the user has been added as a collaborator). Unknown affiliations result in an error. When affiliations is not specified, it defaults to all affiliation types.

include : list of strings

A list of repositories to track in addition to affiliated repositories. Repositories can be specified as either "owner/name" (for a specific repository) or "owner/*" (for all repositories belonging to a given user/organization).

exclude : list of strings

A list of repositories to exclude from tracking, specified the same way as for include. This option takes precedence over the affiliations and include settings.

Example Configuration

[reponews]
recipient = "[email protected]"

sender = "RepoNews Bot <[email protected]>"

# Fetch the GitHub access token from the "token.txt" file next to the
# config file:
auth-token-file = "token.txt"

state-file = "~/.cache/reponews.json"

[reponews.activity]
# Don't report new issues or tags:
issues = false
tags = false

[reponews.activity.affiliated]
# Do report new issues for affiliated repositories:
issues = true

[reponews.activity.repo."pypa/*"]
# Don't report forks of pypa/* repositories:
forks = false
# Don't track all pypa/* repositories; only track those we're affiliated
# with and those listed under `reponews.repos.include`.
#
# Without this setting, the presence of `[reponews.activity.repo."pypa/*"]`
# would cause reponews to track all repositories belonging to the pypa
# organization.
include = false

[reponews.repos]
affiliations = ["OWNER", "ORGANIZATION_MEMBER"]
include = [
    "pypa/packaging",
    "pypa/pip",
    "pypa/setuptools",
    "some-user/*",
]
exclude = [
    "some-user/boring-repo",
]

Sending E-Mail

reponews uses outgoing for sending e-mail, allowing it to handle multiple sending methods like sendmail, SMTP, and more. The outgoing configuration can be located in the reponews configuration file (as an [outgoing] table) or in outgoing's default configuration file. See outgoing's documentation for more information.