Minimize event comments

[tobiasdiez]

Some of the historic events like "Description changed" are quite prominent and large, while adding relatively little additional information. Thus I propose to minimise them: https://docs.github.com/en/graphql/reference/mutations#minimizecomment

[mkoeppe]

Good idea, but I don't think this can be represented in the migration archive.
So this is something that we would need to do after the import, using the GitHub API.

[tobiasdiez]

So the migration script needs to write a list of all comment ids that need to be minimized, or is there an easy way later to decide which comments to minimize?

[mkoeppe]

Sure, it would be more elegant to write out the issue comment URLs to be minimized during the migration, rather than having to parse the issue comments with a regex later.

Is "Description changed" the only type of comment that you'd like to minimize?

What would be the minimizedReason (https://docs.github.com/en/graphql/reference/interfaces#minimizable)? outdated? resolved?

[tobiasdiez]

I would say all "metadata changed" events, e.g. owner, cc added, branch changes, commits, keywords, etc. The current status of these information is displayed in the main issue body.

I vote for "outdated".

[mkoeppe]

• Get node_ids – https://docs.github.com/en/graphql/guides/using-global-node-ids#1-call-a-rest-endpoint-that-returns-an-objects-node-id
• Make GraphQL calls:
  • https://docs.github.com/en/graphql/guides/forming-calls-with-graphql
  • https://docs.github.com/en/graphql/guides/forming-calls-with-graphql#example-mutation
  • https://docs.github.com/en/graphql/reference/input-objects#minimizecommentinput (note clientMutationId is optional)

[mkoeppe]

either directly using curl or with https://github.com/graphql-python/gql

[kwankyu]

If this is easy to do, it would be better done now than later.

[mkoeppe]

I looked into this. The list of URLs of issue comments that the migration script saved in minimized_issue_comments.json is unfortunately not very useful; the issue comments have been renumbered on import.

I suppose I could use it to narrow it down to the list of issues that contain minimizable issue comments, but I would then have to go through the descriptions and minimize those that match a regex.

I'd say not worth the effort, so I'm marking this as "wishlist".

[kwankyu]

It's unfortunate, but I agree that it's not worth the effort.

[mkoeppe]

Well OK, I did a first step, after all. I now have the global node_ids of the comments that start with "Description changed".
(Haven't tried to match all status change messages, which was suggested in #110 (comment)
The script that does that is added in a11cfa2
all_minimized_issue_comment_node_ids.json.gz

[mkoeppe]

I've minimized a comment! sagemath/sage#10

[kwankyu]

Nice! Can this be automated and applied to all issues?

[mkoeppe]

Yes, working on it.

[kwankyu]

The minimization hides all components of a comment, and thus almost hides the comment itself. Perhaps we may not want to use it for some other metadata changes.

[mkoeppe]

That's a great point. I agree.