Minimizing comments from the Atlantis Bot

[reulan]

As an Atlantis user certain PR's can get very difficult to read when going through the posted plans and apply failure/success posted by the Atlantis bot.

Last month GitHub released a feature which allows a user to collapse comments within a Pull Request. https://help.github.com/articles/managing-disruptive-comments/

This would be great for PR's where the HCL is not 100% and is undergoing an atlantis plan/apply then debug workflow.

I would propose to auto hide messages in the following settings:

• If two plans are issued one after another, hide the previous plan as outdated.
• A plan followed by a failed apply, minimize both (plan + the failed apply) when the next plan is issued.
• On successful apply where all resources are created, minimize all comments by the Atlantis bot besides the successful apply.

[lkysow]

I really like this idea! Unfortunately I just looked and I can't find any API to hide comments: https://developer.github.com/v3/issues/comments/

I was thinking about just editing the previous comment in the case of "two plans are issued one after another" and putting the new plan. That would reduce a lot of the comment spam.

[reulan]

Definitely! Your method of editing comments is sufficient, as it still reduces the clutter and gets around the suggested feature not being included in the API as of yet.

[mechastorm]

The other suggestion that would be related is to help reduce the length of a comment of using collapsable markdown sections? Though I believe this is a Github specific feature. Gitlab may not support this.

Rendered

a
b
c
d
e
f

The Markdown syntax

<details>

```
a
b
c
d
e
f
```

</details>

[lkysow]

Ahh interesting, so we could edit the previous plans/apply's and just add the details thing.

[lkysow]

It works on GitLab with:

<details>
<summary>Click me to collapse/fold.</summary>
These details will remain hidden until expanded.

<pre><code>PASTE LOGS HERE</code></pre>
</details>

So you can't use markdown within the <details></details> tags but the above also works with GitHub! So it's do-able.

Click me to collapse/fold.

These details will remain hidden until expanded.

PASTE LOGS HERE

[julianvmodesto]

Could we wrap the logs as a collapsible block by default always for now? That would be a nice improvement without editing the previous plans/applys.

[lkysow]

You mean the plan/apply output? Yeah that's a pretty good idea. But I'd like to do it only if it's over a certain number of lines. If it's a small plan/apply output it's annoying to have to click the Expand button.

[julianvmodesto]

@lkysow would #203 be a good starting point for placing this behavior?

[lkysow]

No I think they're separate. The markdown_renderer should detect the plan output is over 'n' lines long and wrap it in the markdown that makes it expandable.

#203 should handle the specific case of GitHub where we need to split up the comment.

[shinka81]

I like the idea of defaulting to wrapping plan/apply output if text is over 'n' lines but I think it would be useful to have a configuration on atlantis to auto-collapse all TF plan/apply's in case a user prefers that.

[lkysow]

Getting close to a PR:

[mwarkentin]

I opened an issue for a Hide Comment API: isaacs/github#1480

Feel free to vote / send to support.

[mwarkentin]

Thanks for your feedback! We're always working to improve GitHub and we consider every suggestion we receive. I don't show that we are planning to offer a way to minimize comments through the API this year, but I have added it to our internal Feature Request List.

We can't say if/when we may add a feature, however your feedback has definitely been recorded.

[mwarkentin]

Looks like this is available via graphql api: https://developer.github.com/v4/mutation/minimizecomment/

[mwarkentin]

@lkysow thoughts on if this could be reopened with the github v4 api enabling programatic hiding?

[jvperrin]

I believe with #721 closed (and more specifically #897/#994 merged) that this can be closed now too?

[mwarkentin]

I think an option to minimize old applies would still be helpful..

[jamengual]

already implemented