suggestion: we enable the "stale" bot on nodejs/build

[sam-github]

stale bot: https://github.com/apps/stale

Its used for a few other repos associated with Node.js (like libuv).

IMO, it would make a non-judgemental way to clean up stale issues. Note that we have 182 issues, and about 3/8th of them (judging by page counts) have not been updated since 2018. I think this is starting to snowball, there are so many, we inadvertently create duplicates, and we can't easily seperate the "this really needs doing" from the "wouldn't it be nice if ..." issues. Even going through all those issues would take time away from actually making progress on them.

Note that the stale bot won't close anything if anyone makes a comment, any comment. Its process is basically:

• Make a comment saying the issue is stale after a configurable number of days of inactivity.
• Close stale issues after a configurable number of days passes after the issue was marked stale.

Everyone gets a chance to disagree on staleness by posting, some labels can be designated as "never stale", and of course its github.... we can reopen issues if we ever need to.

[bnb]

I would love to see this bot be able to be opt-in for repos across the organization. There are several repos that could benefit from it.

[richardlau]

Another option is the GitHub Actions stale action: https://github.com/actions/stale

[sam-github]

Since we are already using actions, I assume that would be lower barrier to entry.

@nodejs/build - any comments pro or con?

[sam-github]

In case we do decide to try this: #2196

[trivikr]

Prior discussions with some consensus on stale action or stale bot but no follow-ups:

• Stale bot Use stale bot for commenting on stale issues/PRs in Node.js core repo node#28798
• Stale action Use GitHub Actions for writing a stale action node#29232

Configs finalized for nodejs/node:

• daysUntilStale: 60
• daysUntilClose: 365

nodejs/node#29232 (comment)

[Trott]

I'm +1 on at least trying this in the Build repo and seeing how it works for us.

[mhdawson]

I'm +1. In the worst case we can re-open issues and the barrier to keeping an issue open (commenting) is low. Even though we may end up with closed issues for things we still want to do, if we have not gotten to then in a long time and we don't remember them without an issue then we probably have higher priorities anyway.

[sam-github]

So, I enabled it. I hope. Its my first attempt, so if all goes well (?) there will be a flood of notifications at midnight UTC for issues with no activity in the last 300 days. If that doesn't happen, I got the config wrong.