GitHub Action that triggers notifications about changed files to a list of subscribers.

Subscriptions are managed in a CODEOWNERS like file where file patterns are associated with users. You can use standard .github/CODEOWNERS file or make a new one called .github/CODEWATCHERS (can use any name) to have a better configuration flexibility.

• GITHUB_TOKEN (required) - token for interaction with GitHub API, standard GITHUB_TOKEN secret provided to each workflow is good enough
• codewatchers (optional) - location of the subscriptions file, default is ".github/CODEWATCHERS"
• codewatchers_ref (optional) - the ref to use when loading the CODEWATCHERS file, default is github.ref
• ignore_own (optional) - toggles if committer will get notifications for own commits (boolean, default is "true")
• sha_from and sha_to (required) - commits range to analize. Usually these are taken from the push event (see example below)
• aggregate_files_limit (optional) - Limit after which files list will be replaced with aggregated summary message. (integer, default is 20)
• aggregate_notifications_limit (optional) - Limit after which many notifications will be replaces with a single aggregated summary message (for each distinct group of subscribers). (integer, default is 5)

Action doesn't requires repository checkout, all operations are done via GitHub API

name: Commit Notify
on: push
jobs:
  get-notifications:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Check commits
        id: check
        uses: yrtimiD/github-codewatchers@v1
        with:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          codewatchers: '.github/CODEWATCHERS'
          codewatchers_ref: 'main'
          ignore_own: true
          sha_from: ${{ github.event.before }}
          sha_to: ${{ github.event.after }}
          aggregate_files_limit: 20
          aggregate_notifications_limit: 5
    outputs:
      notifications: ${{ steps.check.outputs.notifications }}

If any commit has files matched to subsciption rules - action will output an array of watchers (as simplified GitHub API User) and commit (as simplified GitHub API Commit) object.

Simplified version of output looks next (only most useful fields are shown):

{
  "commit": {
    "sha": "5fd3a8a657f7d78b8e8cdb2747585b24607f7e05",
    "commit": {
      "message": "testing",
      "author": {
        "name": "Example User",
        "email": "example@example.com",
        "date": "2024-04-13T08:00:00Z"
      },
      "committer": {
        "name": "Example User",
        "email": "example@example.com",
        "date": "2024-04-13T08:00:00Z"
      }
    },
    "html_url": "https://github.com/example/example/commit/5fd3a8a657f7d78b8e8cdb2747585b24607f7e05",
    "stats": {
      "total": 2,
      "additions": 1,
      "deletions": 1
    },
    "files": [
      {
        "filename": "some/file/was/changed.txt",
        "status": "modified",
        "additions": 1,
        "deletions": 1,
        "changes": 2,
        "blob_url": "https://github.com/example/example/blob/8b61fc1be2ebe2cfe5102587f55ffabd25a58fa5/some%2Ffile%2Fwas%2Fchanged.txt",
        "raw_url": "https://github.com/example/example/raw/8b61fc1be2ebe2cfe5102587f55ffabd25a58fa5/some%2Ffile%2Fwas%2Fchanged.txt"
      }
    ]
  },
  "watchers": [
    {
      "login": "somewatcher",
      "name": "Some Watcher",
      "email": "Some.Watcher@example.com"
    }
  ]
}

See full workflow example in .github/workflows/commit-notify.yml

Example of .CODEWATCHERS file

*.md         tech_writer@example.com
*.sql        dba@example.com
package.json @somewatcher

• Only up to 3000 files from each commit can be matched (Limitation of Get a commit GitHub API )