Get your Github issues as an iCalendar feed

I've just whipped up a Python script that renders Github issue lists from your favourite projects as an iCalendar feed.

The project is called github-icalendar. It uses Python Flask to expose the iCalendar feed over HTTP.

It is really easy to get up and running. All the dependencies are available on a modern Linux distribution, for example:

$ sudo apt-get install python-yaml python-icalendar python-flask python-pygithub

Just create an API token in Github and put it into a configuration file like this:

api_token: 6b36b3d7579d06c9f8e88bc6fb33864e4765e5fac4a3c2fd1bc33aad
bind_address: ::0
bind_port: 5000
filter: all

Run it from the shell:

$ ./github_icalendar/main.py github-ics.cfg

and connect to it with your favourite iCalendar client.

Consolidating issue lists from Bugzilla, Github, Debian BTS and other sources

A single iCalendar client can usually support multiple sources and thereby consolidate lists of issues from multiple bug trackers.

This can be much more powerful than combining RSS bug feeds because iCalendar has built-in support for concepts such as priority and deadline. The client can use these to help you identify the most critical issues across all your projects, no matter which bug tracker they use.

Bugzilla bugtrackers already expose iCalendar feeds directly, just look for the iCalendar link at the bottom of any search results page. Here is an example URL from the Mozilla instance of Bugzilla.

The Ultimate Debian Database consolidates information from the Debian and Ubuntu universe and can already export it as an RSS feed, there is discussion about extrapolating that to an iCalendar feed too.

Further possibilities

• Prioritizing the issues in Github and mapping these priorities to iCalendar priorities
• Creating tags in Github that allow issues to be ignored/excluded from the feed (e.g. excluding wishlist items)
• Creating summary entries instead of listing all the issues, e.g. a single task entry with the title Fix 2 critical bugs for project foo

Screenshots

The screenshots below are based on the issue list of the Lumicall secure SIP phone for Android.

Screenshot - Mozilla Thunderbird/Lightning (Icedove/Iceowl-extension on Debian)