GitHub Metadata Sync

Github Action to sync repo metadata (description, homepage, topics) from code to repo.

Use Cases

Keep the GitHub repo metadata (description, tags) in sync with your code! Metadata is now configuration as code, and can be validated with a Pull Request.

This is nearly identical to github-actions-repo-sync with the primary differences being:

• Docker container is pulled and not built dynamically (less runtime)
• The file name and type are inferred from the repo, so there's less configuration

Setup

Create a new file called .github/workflows/repo-sync.yml that looks like so:

name: Repository Metadata Sync

on:
  push:
    branches: [main, master]

jobs:
  repo_sync:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Fetching Local Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Repository Metadata Sync
        uses: iloveitaly/github-actions-metadata-sync@v1
        with:
          TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_PERSONAL_TOKEN }}

Note that the built in secrets.github_token does not have the necessary permissions to update the repo description. You must use a personal access token instead:

gh secret set GH_PERSONAL_TOKEN --app actions --body ghp_the_key

Alternatively, you can manually specify the type and path (these are inferred from the repo type by default):

name: Repository Metadata Sync

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  repo_sync:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Fetching Local Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Repository Metadata Sync
        uses: iloveitaly/github-actions-metadata-sync@v1
        with:
          TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_PERSONAL_TOKEN }}
          # optional params, these are inferred from the repo type!
          TYPE: npm
          PATH: package.json

Parameters

Supported Repo Types

Note if using standard PATH inputs the TYPE input is not required.

Metadata without a package manager

For repo types that aren't listed above (like this one), you can still use this action, just have to get creative.

For example (and I would recommend), you can create a file called metadata.json, choose the npm type, and make the file look like so:

{
  "description": "Repo description",
  "homepage": "https://github.com/kbrashears5/github-action-repo-sync",
  "keywords": [
    "sync",
    "repo",
    "metadata"
  ]
}

For example, see .github/workflows/repo-sync.yml and metadata.json in this repo