Cleanowners is a GitHub Action that is designed to help keep CODEOWNERS files current by removing users that are no longer a part of the organization. This is helpful for companies that are looking to remove outdated information in the CODEOWNERS file. This action can be paired with other CODEOWNERS related actions to suggest new owners or lint CODEOWNERS files to ensure accuracy.

This action was developed by the GitHub OSPO for our own use and developed in a way that we could open source it that it might be useful to you as well! If you want to know more about how we use it, reach out in an issue in this repository.

If you need support using this project or have questions about it, please open up an issue in this repository. Requests made directly to GitHub staff or support team will be redirected here to open an issue. GitHub SLA's and support/services contracts do not apply to this repository.

All feedback regarding our GitHub Actions, as a whole, should be communicated through issues on our github-ospo repository.

1. Create a repository to host this GitHub Action or select an existing repository.
2. Select a best fit workflow file from the examples below.
3. Copy that example into your repository (from step 1) and into the proper directory for GitHub Actions: .github/workflows/ directory with the file extension .yml (ie. .github/workflows/cleanowners.yml)
4. Edit the values (ORGANIZATION, EXEMPT_REPOS) from the sample workflow with your information.
5. Also edit the value for GH_ENTERPRISE_URL if you are using a GitHub Server and not using github.com. For github.com users, don't put anything in here.
6. Update the value of GH_TOKEN. Do this by creating a GitHub API token with permissions to read the repository/organization and write issues or pull requests. Then take the value of the API token you just created, and create a repository secret where the name of the secret is GH_TOKEN and the value of the secret the API token. It just needs to match between when you create the secret name and when you refer to it in the workflow file.
7. Commit the workflow file to the default branch (often master or main)
8. Wait for the action to trigger based on the schedule entry or manually trigger the workflow as shown in the documentation.

Below are the allowed configuration options:

This action can be configured to authenticate with GitHub App Installation or Personal Access Token (PAT). If all configuration options are provided, the GitHub App Installation configuration has precedence. You can choose one of the following methods to authenticate:

---
name: Weekly codeowners cleanup
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 1 * *"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  cleanowners:
    name: cleanowners
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - name: Run cleanowners action
        uses: github/cleanowners@v1
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
          ORGANIZATION: <YOUR_ORGANIZATION_GOES_HERE>

---
name: Weekly codeowners cleanup
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 1 * *"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  cleanowners:
    name: cleanowners
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - name: Run cleanowners action
        uses: github/cleanowners@v1
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
          ORGANIZATION: <YOUR_ORGANIZATION_GOES_HERE>
          EXEMPT_REPOS: "org_name/repo_name_1, org_name/repo_name_2"
          ISSUE_REPORT: true
      - name: Create issue
        uses: peter-evans/create-issue-from-file@v5
        with:
          title: Cleanowners Report
          content-filepath: ./report.md
          assignees: <YOUR_GITHUB_HANDLE_HERE>
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

You can authenticate as a GitHub App Installation by providing additional environment variables. If GH_TOKEN is set alongside these GitHub App Installation variables, the GH_TOKEN will be ignored and not used.

---
name: Weekly codeowners cleanup via GitHub App
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: "3 2 1 * *"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  cleanowners:
    name: cleanowners
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write

    steps:
      - name: Run cleanowners action
        uses: github/cleanowners@v1
        env:
          GH_APP_ID: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_ID }}
          GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID }}
          GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY: ${{ secrets.GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY }}
          ORGANIZATION: <YOUR_ORGANIZATION_GOES_HERE>
          EXEMPT_REPOS: "org_name/repo_name_1, org_name/repo_name_2"

1. Make sure you have at least Python3.11 installed
2. Copy .env-example to .env
3. Fill out the .env file with a token from a user that has access to the organization (listed below). Tokens should have at least write:org and write:repository access.
4. Fill out the .env file with the configuration parameters you want to use
5. pip3 install -r requirements.txt
6. Run python3 ./cleanowners.py, which will output everything in the terminal

MIT

Looking for more resources for your open source program office (OSPO)? Check out the github-ospo repository for a variety of tools designed to support your needs.