Deprecating the Release Drafter GitHub App (not Actions!)

[TimonVS]

Hey all, we're planning to deprecate the Release Drafter GitHub App in favor of the Release Drafter GitHub Action. This move will help us focus on making improvements to the Action and reduce time spent on maintaining two platforms.

The plan is to keep the GitHub App running for at least another year. During this period we'll keep updating it with security patches and bug fixes (only for breaking bugs), but it won't receive any new features.

Please let us know if you have any concerns about deprecating the GitHub App.

[jetersen]

Hmm perhaps we could split the code base?

To retain the probot behavior.
And start using more actions code base.

See: https://github.com/GitTools/actions for a good example supporting multiple actions inside a single repo.

[jetersen]

I'd like to drop the need for running the action inside a docker container.

[ssbarnea]

I hope you do not do this before addressing #148 which should enable us to run out own release-drafter, from outside github.

[oleg-nenashev]

We use the GithHub app in 150++ repositories in the Jenkins project. As a maintainer of the Jenkins GitHub org, I support moving to GitHub Actions even if it requires significant effort on our side. Why?

• It grants more insights to maintainers, especially when Release drafter fails due to configuration or infra issues.
• We can easily apply patches on our side before it gets into upstream. So we have more control over the tooling we use
• GitHub App service is quite difficult to maintain, and it has limited scalability without resource investment. It would be perfectly fine if Release Drafter SaaS was a payed service, but for pure OSS project it is a serious burden on maintainers. I would rather want them to be free from the SaaS overhead and focus on features in the project.

Once a CLI tool in #148 is delivered, we there will be even more flexibility for SaaS. I agree with @ssbarnea that it is important, and I am ready to contribute to it. 1 year is enough to get it implemented

P.S: anybody can also host his/her own Release Drafter App if needed. Deployment part is documented, and it is quite trivial to deploy it.

[danepowell]

Github Actions has regulatory issues that make it untenable for large companies like mine, so we can only use Github Apps. I'd be really disappointed to lose access to the Release Drafter app.

[jetersen]

@danepowell as a large company. You should be able to take the source and host this yourself 😄
At the moment @toolmantim is hosting this out of his generosity.

[ssbarnea]

large is not an excuse for not being cheap ;)

[ssbarnea]

Out of curiosity, in two days there will be 3 years since the app was deprecated. When is going to be removed?