Update parent issues using GitHub Action

GitHub Action that updates parent issues that are linked by child issues. When child issue is closed or opened, referenced parent is updated. You can use this to create Epics using GitHub Issues or simply for better tracking of dependent issues. Issue hierarchies are supported too.

In order to link child issues to parent issues, add a line Parent: #1234 or Epic: #1234 or Parent issue: #1234 anywhere in the child issue body.

Screenshot

Usage

Create a workflow file in your .github/workflows/ directory with the following contents:

Basic example

name: Epics workflow
on:
  schedule:
    - cron:  '0 5 * * *'
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    - name: Update parent issues
      uses: ribtoks/parent-issue-update@master
      with:
        TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        REPO: ${{ github.repository }}

NOTE: Please note that currently GitHub has 5000 requests per hour limit so if you are running it on a fresh repository and you have really many issues, you may hit this limit.

This action was designed to run on schedule instead of per issue update event in order to reduce amount of possible race conditions when multiple issues are updated at once and multiple worflows are started in parallel. Currently GitHub Actions do not support cancelling parallel jobs. When this will be supported, it will be safe to use this action per issue opened/reopened/closed trigger.

You can use this action together with TODO issue generator in order to link all TODO isues to the parent issue for better tracking (if you use a specific syntax in the TODO body - see docs).

Inputs

Input	Description
TOKEN	Github token used to create or close issues (required)
REPO	Repository name in the format of owner/repo (required)
DRY_RUN	Do not update real real issues (used for debugging)
SYNC_DAYS	Update parent issues for issue changes in the last SYNC_DAYS (defaults to 1)
MAX_LEVELS	Keep this deep hierarchy in parent issues (defaults to 0 - unlimited)
ADD_CHANGELOG	Add a comment with the update changelog to parent issue (default 1 - enabled)
UPDATE_CLOSED	Update closed parent issues too (default 0 - disabled)

Flag values like DRY_RUN or ADD_CHANGELOG use values 1/true/y as ON switch.

If you want to run this action every week, you need to update SYNC_DAYS to 7 and update cron job schedule in Action syntax to be 0 0 0 * * (use crontab guru for help).

If you want to sync all issues at every run, use all as a value for SYNC_DAYS. This may be useful on the initial integration in the repository.

Outputs

Output	Description
updatedIssues	Equals to 1 if updated any issues