labels

CLI app for managing GitHub labels for Python 3.6 and newer. 📝

Installation

labels is available for download from PyPI via pip:

pip install labels

Versions follow Calendar Versioning using a YY.MINOR.MICRO scheme. 🗓

Authentication

The labels CLI connects to the GitHub API to modify labels for a GitHub repository. Please create your own personal API token and choose the correct token scope based on whether you want to manage issue labels for a public or a private repository. Then set up two environment variables in your terminal:

export LABELS_USERNAME="<GITHUB_USERNAME>"
export LABELS_TOKEN="<GITHUB_TOKEN>"

Usage

Once you've installed labels and set up the environment variables, you're ready to use the labels CLI to manage labels for a GitHub repository. The CLI comes with two commands: fetch and sync. Both commands require the name of the owner and the name of the GitHub repository to fetch from or sync to. By default, labels tries to load this information from your local Git repository based on the URL for the origin remote repository.

For example, if you run labels from your local clone of the earth repository with origin set to git@github.com:hackebrot/earth.git owner will be hackebrot and repo will be earth. 🌍

You can override one or both of these values manually using the following CLI options:

-o, --owner TEXT     GitHub owner name
-r, --repo TEXT      GitHub repository name

Fetch

When you use labels for the first time, you will start by fetching information about the existing labels for your GitHub project. The CLI will then write a TOML file to your computer with the retrieved information. The default name for this file is labels.toml in your current working directory and can be changed by passing the -f, --filename PATH option followed by the path to where you want to write to.

labels fetch -o hackebrot -r pytest-emoji

[bug]
color = "ea707a"
description = "Bugs and problems with pytest-emoji"
name = "bug"

["code quality"]
color = "fcc4db"
description = "Tasks related to linting, coding style, type checks"
name = "code quality"

[dependencies]
color = "43a2b7"
description = "Tasks related to managing dependencies"
name = "dependencies"

[docs]
color = "2abf88"
description = "Tasks to write and update documentation"
name = "docs"

["good first issue"]
color = "bfdadc"
description = "Tasks to pick up by newcomers to the project"
name = "good first issue"

Sync

Now that you have a file on your computer that represents your GitHub labels, you can edit this file and then run labels sync to update the remote repository. But first let's look into how that works... 🔍

Representation of a GitHub label in the written TOML file:

[docs]
color = "2abf88"
description = "Tasks to write and update documentation"
name = "docs"

The section name ([docs] in the example above) represents the name of the label for that repository and is identical to the name field when running labels fetch. Do not edit the section name of existing labels yourself!

The fields color, description and name are parameters that you can edit with the labels CLI.

• name - The name of the label
• description - A short description of the label
• color - The hexadecimal color code for the label without the leading #

You can make the following changes to labels for your repo:

• You can delete a label by removing the corresponding section from the labels file 🗑
• You can edit a label by changing the value for one or more parameters for that label 🎨
• You can create a new label by adding a new section with your desired parameters 📝

When creating labels choose a section name identical to the name parameter.

Check your label changes before syncing by using the dryrun CLI option:

-n, --dryrun         Do not modify remote labels

Example usage:

labels sync -n -o hackebrot -r pytest-emoji

This would delete the following labels:
  - dependencies
This would update the following labels:
  - bug
  - good first issue
This would create the following labels:
  - duplicate
This would NOT modify the following labels:
  - code quality
  - docs

Running labels sync without the dryrun option also updates the labels file, so that section names match the name parameter.

If labels encounters any errors while sending requests to the GitHub API, it will print information about the failure and continue with the next label until it has processed all of the labels.

Community

Please check out the good first issue label for tasks, that are good candidates for your first contribution to labels. Your contributions are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given! 👍

Please note that labels is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

License

Distributed under the terms of the MIT license, labels is free and open source software.