This topic serves as information regarding GitHub Stale which was recently added.
What is GitHub Stale?
This function that was recently added as of May 24th was added to combat old issues and pull requests that have not had any new progress made. GitHub Stale checks each issue and pull request to see if any new activity has happened on the issue/pull. If no activity has happened within the past 90 days, the add-on automatically adds the “Stale” tag to the issue/pull. Once this has been added, the developers have 7 days to comment or add to the issue/pull. Otherwise after 7 days the issue/pull gets automatically closed.
Why was this added?
Currently the issue/pull list that we have on GitHub is getting increasingly large. Most of these issue/pull requests are not being responded to. The issue with this is that it would take forever to close all the issues/pulls that aren’t receiving updates. This add-on was added to automatically close all these without the need for org admins to remove them all.
My issue/pull was marked as Stale and I don’t want it to. How can I get it unmarked?
Simply write a comment on your issue/pull saying “Bump” or something of that nature and the “Stale” tag will be automatically removed and the 90 day counter will be reset automatically.
Org Admins: How do I prevent an issue/pull from being marked Stale?
Currently there are two exceptions that are in place – if the issue/pull has the “Security” tag, is marked as pinned, or is added to a milestone, it will not be marked Stale at all. If an org admin wants to add a tag to not ever be marked as stale, please contact me and I will create a pull to add it to the list of exemptions.