Request: don't comment on error

[cjihrig]

Sadly, an error occurred when I tried to trigger a build. :(

These comments don't really add value to GitHub threads, create additional notification spam, and are likely confusing for newcomers. Is it possible for the bot to just not comment, and instead email (or otherwise notify) bot maintainers when errors occur.

[phillipj]

I see your point indeed. Too busy at work to fix it ASAP, but anyone feel free to only invoke createPrComment() on successes about here: ./scripts/trigger-jenkins-build.js#L97.

github-bot at nodejs.org might be suitable?

[refack]

We could make these into a Status API call, which is less intrusive...

[phillipj]

True @refack. As a bot maintainer I appreciated getting noticed by collaborators when something starts to fail, but getting an email every time will be quite annoying. Guess that annoyance is in practise what feature request is all about, just with PR comments rather than emails.

Posting a failed status via the Status API like we do for Jenkins job statuses today, would bring the point across and allow collaborators to open an issue in this repo or contact bot maintainers somehow.

On second thought, only sending that email, wouldn't let the collaborators know there's currently some issues kicking off Jenkins builds. It would rather be that nothing happens, which I assume would cause more confusion and uncertainty than getting some kind of feedback about the failure from the bot's point of view.

[phillipj]

For ref now that #228 just rolled out, the bot should start re-using / edit its previous PR comment, which I'm assuming will also help a lot to reduce the previous comment noise it has generated.

[richardlau]

For ref now that #228 just rolled out, the bot should start re-using / edit its previous PR comment, which I'm assuming will also help a lot to reduce the previous comment noise it has generated.

I kicked off https://ci.nodejs.org/job/node-test-pull-request/23781/ for nodejs/node#28128 but the bot doesn't appear to have updated any of the comments it previously made in that PR.

[phillipj]

Thanks @richardlau! Found this in the logs:

00:42:03.038Z ERROR bot: Error while creating comment on GitHub (req_id=baae5340-8be1-11e9-a4d0-856e0a231c31)
    GraphqlError: Variable number of type Int! was provided invalid value
        at request.then.response (/home/../node_modules/@octokit/graphql/lib/graphql.js:31:15)

I'll dive into this to see what might be causing it..

[phillipj]

Rolled a couple of improvements (2488a2b, 98f7322) which should either fix the issue or give more detailed info about what/when failed.

[richardlau]

Started https://ci.nodejs.org/job/node-test-pull-request-lite-pipeline/3673/ for nodejs/node#28178. No edit/update in the issue from the bot.

[phillipj]

Soooo #241 rolled out today, which removed the error comments completely for now.

That's still not ideal as bot maintainers really do need a hint about these kinds of failures when they start happening. Building upon #238 (comment) about using the Status API to report these failures, is that something that potentially could break node-core-utils @joyeecheung? Or isn't statuses used there at all?