KonMari your GitHub watchlist

First, if you don’t know what KonMari means, see here. My interpretation, based on having watched the Netflix series and not having read the books, is that you get rid of things that don’t give you joy. This is a huge oversimplification of Marie Kondo’s KonMari Method, but it’s the bit that’s relevant to this post.

Now back to regular programming…

As of two days ago I was watching over 2000 GitHub repositories! In an effort to increase the signal/noise ratio of the GitHub notifications I get in my email, I wanted to trim down this list.

But how did I end up watching over 2000 repositories in the first place? I teach my courses on GitHub, which means I have a GitHub organization for each course, and within that organization a repository per student (or team) per assignment. For example, in Spring of 2018 when I taught a course with 82 students and 4 teaching assistants, I ended up with 925 repositories in my course organization! If you were to go to the course organization, you’ll only be able to see 19 repositories in there since the student work is in private repositories, but trust me, they’re there!

Sta 199 - Spring 2018 GitHub org for course

These repos were all created using the ghclass package, which makes calls to the GitHub API leveraging the gh package. As the owner of the GitHub organization for each course, I was automatically watching each and every one of them. This is not necessarily a big deal – the class is over, the students are no longer interacting with those repositories, and so no noise is generated from them. GitHub allows you to either unwatch all repos at once or one-by-one at github.com/watching. Neither of these were ideal solutions in my case. I didn’t want to unwatch everything, and the sheer number of student repositories made it infeasible to browse my watchlist and unwatch one at a time.

What I needed was a way to unwatch all repos in a given organization so that I can apply it to my past course organizations and cut down my watchlist one course (hundreds of repositories) at a time.

I think what comes next is interesting in terms of how people with different background/expertise approach the same problem. Googling “unwatch all repos in an org” landed me here, and specifically with the following suggestion:

Unwatch from the JavaScript console

First of all, it took me a second to realize that I’m supposed to run this piece of code in the JavaScript console of my browser since I’m not really used to running code anywhere but in RStudio.

If you want to give this a try, go to github.com/watching while logged in to GitHub. Then, in your browser window go to the JavaScript console (in Chrome: View -> Developer -> Developer Tools -> Console) and run the following code replacing ORG_NAME with the GitHub name of the organization or user you want to unwatch the repos of. For example, if you are watching any of my repos and you want to unwatch them all, you’d replace ORG_NAME with mine-cetinkaya-rundel, or if you want to unwatch all repos in the OpenIntroStat organization, you would replace it with OpenIntroStat.

Array.prototype.slice.apply(document.querySelectorAll('.Box-row')).forEach(el => {
    const org = el.querySelector('a[href^="/ORG_NAME"]');
    console.log(org);
    if (org) el.querySelector('button').click()
})

This kinda works. It doesn’t actually unwatch all repositories in the given organization, only the ones that show up on the current page you’re viewing. Since the list is paginated at github.com/watching, you need to run this code over and over on each page to get all the repos. Or maybe you don’t, maybe there’s a better way of doing this in JavaScript, but I don’t know any JavaScript, so I was stuck.

More importantly, though, this solution automates user actions in the browser, which is so different than how I would approach the problem. My natural instinct is to interact with the database that stores the information on the repositories I’m watching, and remove records corresponding to those I want to unwatch. A quick peek at the GitHub API docs revealed that the GitHub API indeed has endpoints for watched repositories. You can read more about them here.

And an R based solution to KonMari your GitHub watchlist now lives in the ghclass package (the very package that landed me with this problem in the first place). Four new functions – get_watching(), watch_repo(), unwatch_repo(), and ignore_repo() – are designed to help with actions around watching and unwatching repositories.

Below are a few usage examples. If you want to give this a try, first read the Authentication section of the package vignette, which walks you through saving your personal access token.

Install the package (which is not yet on CRAN, but release is planned soon!)¹:

library(devtools)
install_github("rundel/ghclass")

Load the package:

library(ghclass)
#> Loading required package: gh

Get a list of all repositories I’m watching:

get_watching()
#>   [1] "ShinyEd/ShinyEd"                                              
#>   [2] "mine-cetinkaya-rundel/chanceReproducibility"                  
#>   [3] "OpenIntroStat/openintro-r-package"                            
#>   [4] "mine-cetinkaya-rundel/openintro"                              
#>   [5] "mccahill/docker-rstudio"                                      
#>   [6] "mine-cetinkaya-rundel/gapminder"                              
#>   [7] "mine-cetinkaya-rundel/rr-intro"                               
#>   [8] "mine-cetinkaya-rundel/duke_statsci_homepage"                  
#>   [9] "OpenIntroStat/statistics-exercises"                           
#>  [10] "mine-cetinkaya-rundel/rotten"                                 
...

Get a list of all repositories in the Sta199-S18 organization that have the character string project in their names²:

sta199_projects <- get_repo(org = "Sta199-S18", filter = "project")
sta199_projects
#>  [1] "Sta199-S18/project"                    
#>  [2] "Sta199-S18/project-23"                 
#>  [3] "Sta199-S18/project-24-7"               
#>  [4] "Sta199-S18/project-ACE"                
#>  [5] "Sta199-S18/project-Blue_Wombats"       
#>  [6] "Sta199-S18/project-BME"                
#>  [7] "Sta199-S18/project-Cosmic"             
#>  [8] "Sta199-S18/project-Databaes"           
#>  [9] "Sta199-S18/project-Duke_Squirrels"     
#> [10] "Sta199-S18/project-five_squared"       
#> [11] "Sta199-S18/project-get_MECT"           
#> [12] "Sta199-S18/project-Git_R_Done"         
#> [13] "Sta199-S18/project-HJC"                
#> [14] "Sta199-S18/project-instructors"        
#> [15] "Sta199-S18/project-InterstellR"        
#> [16] "Sta199-S18/project-Kimchi_Stew"        
#> [17] "Sta199-S18/project-Migos"              
#> [18] "Sta199-S18/project-Panda_Express"      
#> [19] "Sta199-S18/project-R_we_done_yet-"     
#> [20] "Sta199-S18/project-Six_Squared"        
#> [21] "Sta199-S18/project-Sweeter_than_SugR"  
#> [22] "Sta199-S18/project-TEAM_POWER"         
#> [23] "Sta199-S18/project-Team_Untitled"      
#> [24] "Sta199-S18/project-Tequila_Mockingbird"
#> [25] "Sta199-S18/project-The_Data_Wranglers"

Watch all of these repositories:

watch_repo(sta199_projects)
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-23'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-24-7'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-ACE'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Blue_Wombats'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-BME'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Cosmic'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Databaes'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Duke_Squirrels'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-five_squared'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-get_MECT'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Git_R_Done'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-HJC'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-instructors'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-InterstellR'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Kimchi_Stew'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Migos'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Panda_Express'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-R_we_done_yet-'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Six_Squared'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Sweeter_than_SugR'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-TEAM_POWER'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Team_Untitled'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-Tequila_Mockingbird'.
#> ✔ Watched 'Sta199-S18/project-The_Data_Wranglers'.

Get a list of all repositories I’m watching in the Sta199-S18 organization:

sta199_watching <- get_watching(filter = "Sta199-S18")
sta199_watching
#>  [1] "Sta199-S18/project"                    
#>  [2] "Sta199-S18/project-23"                 
#>  [3] "Sta199-S18/project-24-7"               
#>  [4] "Sta199-S18/project-ACE"                
#>  [5] "Sta199-S18/project-Blue_Wombats"       
#>  [6] "Sta199-S18/project-BME"                
#>  [7] "Sta199-S18/project-Cosmic"             
#>  [8] "Sta199-S18/project-Databaes"           
#>  [9] "Sta199-S18/project-Duke_Squirrels"     
#> [10] "Sta199-S18/project-five_squared"       
#> [11] "Sta199-S18/project-get_MECT"           
#> [12] "Sta199-S18/project-Git_R_Done"         
#> [13] "Sta199-S18/project-HJC"                
#> [14] "Sta199-S18/project-instructors"        
#> [15] "Sta199-S18/project-InterstellR"        
#> [16] "Sta199-S18/project-Kimchi_Stew"        
#> [17] "Sta199-S18/project-Migos"              
#> [18] "Sta199-S18/project-Panda_Express"      
#> [19] "Sta199-S18/project-R_we_done_yet-"     
#> [20] "Sta199-S18/project-Six_Squared"        
#> [21] "Sta199-S18/project-Sweeter_than_SugR"  
#> [22] "Sta199-S18/project-TEAM_POWER"         
#> [23] "Sta199-S18/project-Team_Untitled"      
#> [24] "Sta199-S18/project-Tequila_Mockingbird"
#> [25] "Sta199-S18/project-The_Data_Wranglers"

Unwatch all repositories in the Sta199-S18 organization:

unwatch_repo(sta199_watching)
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-23'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-24-7'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-ACE'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Blue_Wombats'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-BME'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Cosmic'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Databaes'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Duke_Squirrels'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-five_squared'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-get_MECT'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Git_R_Done'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-HJC'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-instructors'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-InterstellR'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Kimchi_Stew'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Migos'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Panda_Express'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-R_we_done_yet-'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Six_Squared'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Sweeter_than_SugR'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-TEAM_POWER'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Team_Untitled'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-Tequila_Mockingbird'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'Sta199-S18/project-The_Data_Wranglers'.

Ahh… bliss! I love these students, but it feels good to trim down that watchlist.

Note that if you were to run the code above, you would only watch/unwatch the one public repository, Sta199-S18/project, and not the private student repositories. If you want to watch/unwatch all repositories under rstudio-education you can try the following:

• Watch all repos in the rstudio-education organization:

library(magrittr)

get_repo(org = "rstudio-education") %>%
  watch_repo()
#> ✔ Watched 'rstudio-education/datascience-box'.
#> ✔ Watched 'rstudio-education/intro-shiny-rmarkdown'.
#> ✔ Watched 'rstudio-education/master-the-tidyverse'.
#> ✔ Watched 'rstudio-education/master-the-tidyverse-instructors'.
#> ✔ Watched 'rstudio-education/teach-the-tidyverse'.
...

• Unwatch all repos in the rstudio-education organization:

get_watching(filter = "rstudio-education") %>%
  unwatch_repo()
#> ✔ Unwatched 'rstudio-education/datascience-box'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'rstudio-education/intro-shiny-rmarkdown'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'rstudio-education/master-the-tidyverse'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'rstudio-education/master-the-tidyverse-instructors'.
#> ✔ Unwatched 'rstudio-education/teach-the-tidyverse'.
...

If these functions truly followed the KonMari method, they would thank the repositories before unwatching them. But that seemed like a stretch… If you like, you can express your gratitude for the repositories you’re letting go of by saying a big “thank you” as you run unwatch_repo().

During this process I also discovered that you can adjust your GitHub settings to not automatically watch repositories you’re given push access to by unchecking “Automatically watch repositories” box at github.com/settings/notifications.

GitHub notification preferences