BUG: Github Action for Issue Tracking not always running

[asoplata]

Problem: Our Issue Metrics Github Action here https://github.com/jonescompneurolab/hnn-core/blob/master/.github/workflows/issue-metrics.yml does not always run for some reason I don't understand. If you look for Issues containing the automated Monthly reports (here https://github.com/jonescompneurolab/hnn-core/issues?q=is%3Aissue+monthly ), then you see that they've only been run for the 2024 months of May, July, and September.

Solution: hack the mainframe and solve the problem. Maybe it's the Cronjob arguments, or the date definition, or something else.

More context: As an example, in #900 , at the bottom of the auto-generated report, it gives a query that you can copy and use to filter the issues you're interested in. The query given is for all days in September, month 2024-09. If we adapt this query for August for example, such as here https://github.com/jonescompneurolab/hnn-core/issues?q=is%3Aissue+created%3A2024-08-01..2024-08-31 , then we see that there were issues created in that month. This should have lead to a Monthly metrics report being created for August, however no report was automatically generated.

This is especially weird, since as far as I can tell, the Action workflow that we use was, rightly, modeled after the Github Blog's example for exactly this situation: https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/metrics-for-issues-pull-requests-and-discussions/ . It is possible the bug is inherent to that script itself, as opposed to any customizations we made.

[jasmainak]

the cronjob arguments are fine, see: https://crontab.guru/

honestly github actions can be a bit finicky depending on the workload etc. Are other repos actually using this solution? If the only purpose is NIH reporting, we might want to consider alternative solutions that are easier to maintain.

[ntolley]

Maybe look at the script used to process/analyze the issue metadata and modify it to run locally for reporting?

FYI here's where to look for failing jobs https://github.com/jonescompneurolab/hnn-core/actions/workflows/issue-metrics.yml