help getting started with metrics

[shahzebsiddiqui]

Hi @lowlighter i am trying to get started with metrics and i was trying out the metrics workflow see shahzebsiddiqui/shahzebsiddiqui#5 i have a PAT that i created and added the secret in the project.

I was trying the most basic plugins tried several of them and i am getting an error i cant seem to make sense of what the error message is. I would appreciate your help. See https://github.com/shahzebsiddiqui/shahzebsiddiqui/actions/runs/4016884342/jobs/6900512981

The error message is bit cryptic and i dont know whats going on. Can you please help me troubleshoot my workflow.

Error: Not Found
Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

Note i have followed directions in https://github.com/lowlighter/metrics/blob/master/.github/readme/partials/documentation/setup/action.md and tried to setup my PAT and just add a workflow.

I understand the images should be auto-generated. I have looked at your profile workflow to make sense of this https://github.com/lowlighter/lowlighter/blob/master/.github/workflows/metrics.yml and the README. i take it the images can be embedded once workflow is running properly

[spenserblack]

Looks like it's getting triggered by a pull request. As a result, the committer branch is detected as refs/pull/5/merge, which isn't a branch.
IMO you probably only want to trigger on pushes to master or main, not pull requests, but if you want to keep using pull requests then you probably want to explicitly set the committer branch to main. Otherwise, it could potentially be a feature request that metrics should use the PR branch if the GitHub event is detected to be a PR.

[shahzebsiddiqui]

i removed the PR condition shahzebsiddiqui/shahzebsiddiqui@7d3bf08 but it still fails. I can try committer_branch but right now it just been lot of trial and error.

[shahzebsiddiqui]

okay so i was able to get it working by unprotecting the branch and now i get my CI check writing files to my main branch https://github.com/shahzebsiddiqui/shahzebsiddiqui/blob/main/metrics.plugin.calendar.svg so i take it i need to have a separate branch where i commit these auto-generated files??

What i dont get is how @lowlighter you are able to generate these files without using committer_branch looking at your CI pipeline https://github.com/lowlighter/lowlighter/blob/master/.github/workflows/metrics.yml

[spenserblack]

so i take it i need to have a separate branch where i commit these auto-generated files??

There are a lot of ways to use this tool. Using a separate branch is just one way, and I only recommended it because you had branch protections on main that appeared to block pushing without a PR. If you're fine with leaving those branch protections off, I don't think you need to worry about committing the metrics to a separate branch.

[lowlighter]

Hi 👋 !

As @spenserblack said there's a lot of way to use this tool and save rendered images (which might be a bit confusing at first but ultimately you should find the setup that suits you the most). You can read more about this in 🧶 Configuring output action.

Directly commiting on target branch is the default behaviour, that you can indeed configure with the committer_branch option. You can also ask to use pull requests instead by using output_action: pull-request, and adding output_action: pull-request-merge to your final job, which may helps you pass the Changes must be made through a pull request restriction.

Personally my workflow uses GitHub gists (output_action: gist + committer_gist) which is why my renders are "hidden" from my profile repository and I don't need a separate branch to commit them (you just need to create a gist first, and copy its ID then you just copy the raw links in the files of it)

But for example this repository generates examples on a separate branch by using output_action: none and handling the images manually using git (but note that it rewrites the history of the branch in this example, which may not necessarly be wanted):

metrics/.github/workflows/examples.yml

Lines 1401 to 1411 in ba5d3c4

	- name: Publish examples
	if: ${{ success() || failure() }}
	run: |
	set +e
	git config user.name github-actions[bot]
	git config user.email 41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com
	git pull
	sudo cp /metrics_renders/* ./
	git add --all
	git commit -m "chore: update examples"
	git push --force

Hope this helps 👍

[shahzebsiddiqui]

i see now, yeah i was wondering how you were not generating images in the profile repo. I think for now i am fine with having the images be pushed to the main repo.

I guess question, do i need to run the metrics pipeline on a cron schedule to ensure my stats are up to date?

[RMehdid]

Anyone still having this issue?