Create IETF Internet-Draft Github Action

This Github Action creates a repository for an IETF Internet-Draft in the designated author's personal Github account or Github Organization.

This new repository includes the following features:

• Makefile for generating HTML, XML, and TXT versions of a file written in Markdown
• Github Actions workflow that validates the Markdown draft, generates the alternate versions, and commits them to the repository
• Github Actions workflow that uploads the XML version of the draft to the IETF Datatracker, which triggers a confirmation email.

Action Inputs

draft-name: Name of the new draft. This string will be prepended with draft-

org-name: Github Organization name to create the draft repo in. If this is not provided then the action will create a new draft in the personal account of the repository "user" (specified in the repository settings under Actions secrets).

private-repo: Boolean "true" or "false", defaults to false

Setting Up This Action

Creating Workflows Repo

This action must reside in a Github repository in order to be used by a Github Action. We recommend having a dedicated private repository to run these, as anyone with access to the repository will be able to run the workflow with the permissions listed below, but it can also be added to a repository that contains other code.

More details about Github Actions can be found in their documentation.

The following YAML file will add this action to a repository:

# {REPO_ROOT}/.github/workflows/main.yml

name: 'Generate new repository'
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      draft-name:
        required: true
        description: 'Name of new draft and repository'
      org-name:
        description: 'Name of Github Organization to use'
      private-repo:
        description: 'Create as a private repo (default false)'
        default: false

jobs:
  generate-new-repository:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Create a new IETF draft repository
    steps:
      - name: Create new repository action
        id: generate-repo
        uses: IRTF-HRPC/[email protected]
        with:
          draft-name: ${{ github.event.inputs.draft-name }}
          create-repo-github-user: ${{ secrets.CREATE_REPO_GITHUB_USER }}
          create-repo-github-token: ${{ secrets.CREATE_REPO_GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          org-name: ${{ github.event.inputs.org-name }}
          private-repo: ${{ github.event.inputs.private-repo }}

Creating Personal Access Token

To use this action, you'll need to create a token that performs API calls on your behalf. If using this action within a Github Organization, we recommend using a machine user whose repository permissions are scoped to only the repositories it needs access to. Be aware that this using this token will allow any users with access to the workflow repo to every repository the token owner has access to.

You'll need to provide the Github Actions workflow repository with a Github API Token that has at a minimum the following permissions:

• repo
• workflow

Create your Github token by logging in as the intended user, going to the user dropdown, then Settings -> Developer settings -> Personal access tokens.

Generate the token and save the value.

Now go to the repository's Settings tab, then the Secrets sidebar option. Click on the New repository secret button. Provide the Github token as a Github Actions secret with the key CREATE_REPO_GITHUB_TOKEN, and the current user as a secret with the key CREATE_REPO_GITHUB_USER.

How To Create A New Draft Repo

To create a new draft repository, go to the Actions tab and select Generate new repository in the sidebar.

Under the workflow runs section there will be a button labeled Run workflow. Clicking this brings up several options. The name will be the exact name the new repo will create, so ensure this doesn't conflict. Add the name of the Github Organization if this should exist under an organization rather than as the user's own. And lastly, set the last option to true to create a private repo.

How To Use Newly Created Repo

The created repo has two capabilities initialized upon creation.

The first is a validation workflow against the markdown draft file that runs on every commit, and generates and commits HTML, XML, and TXT files from the draft markdown back to the repo upon push to the main branch. (Note that the first commit will fail on generation since the default draft template is not valid.)

The second is a manually triggered workflow that takes an email address as input, and submits the current version of the repository's draft to IETF Datatracker. This will result in a confirmation email being sent to the address provided.