"Unchanged files with check annotations" is disruptive and should be configurable

[ThiefMaster]

The "Unchanged files with check annotations" feature when using problem matchers needs to be configurable (for each action/matcher): It's pretty discouraging for a new contributor to see loads of unrelated warnings from a style checker in their first PR that are completely unrelated, not to mention that it also adds noise for checkers where you know that it's not something that could be caused in changes from another file in the PR.

For example, I'm running stylelint with no-descending-specificity warnings enabled. For CSS added in a PR those warnings may be useful, but I REALLY don't care about the almost 1000 warnings in our existing codebase (some even in legacy files) when running CI for a new PR!

Right now the only workaround for this is to either disable the rule altogether, only show errors but not warnings, or somehow only run the linter on new/changed files when running the action for a PR.

[majew7]

only show errors but not warnings

Yes, in the context of .NET, I worked around this "Unchanged files with check annotations" beta feature by building my solution without warnings.

dotnet build MySolution.sln --no-restore /property:WarningLevel=0

Very lame.

[dpwiz]

I only recently got to using GitHub full time and this s..t makes my blood boil 🤬
It is makred beta, you'd betta have a way to remove it 💢

[mistercrunch]

Please allow us to turn this off! For us, warnings are useful in the context of eslint and certain workflows, but not useful in the context of an unrelated PR. There should always be an easy way to turn off beta features like this one.

[kberg]

This is preventing me from merging perfectly good PRs, and is incorrect.

[kberg]

ref: https://github.com/terraforming-mars/terraforming-mars/actions/runs/8510380085/job/23307858994?pr=6540

[pavelloz]

How to turn this thing off? Do i need to resort to ublock filters or what?

[m2-farzan]

How to turn this thing off? Do i need to resort to ublock filters or what?

I'm using this ublock filter:

github.com##div.js-diff-progressive-container:has-text(/Unchanged files with check annotations/)

[pavelloz]

Thank you very much @m2-farzan
This thing is ridicolous and frustrating. Im surprised its still an issue we have to work around.

[mistercrunch]

What do we need to do in order to get GitHub to assign an engineer to this issue? The issue is annoying enough that if GitHub's code was open source one of us would bite the bullet and get this done. Can't be that hard!

[UserNotFound]

The linter I'm use allows me to ignore errors, but they are still logged as warnings, and every PR for that repo is full of these annotations. If this is in Beta, why can't I opt out? If people have been complaining for 4 years, why hasn't it been addressed? Feels like an abandoned feature I'm forced to live with.

I've been pressing the a key to hide them, but still....it's no fun to have to tell others they have to do that when reviewing my PRs....

https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1366417484698578953

[pavelloz]

Almost 4 years... Unbelievable.

[mistercrunch]

Do we know if github employees look at top issues, maybe prioritized by number of comments/reactions? If so maybe we get our communities to +1 👍 this issue? We've got about ~200 reactions now, how many does it take to get something prioritized!?

Wasn't there some story about some software engineer who raged-joined a company, got hired, fixed the annoying bug they couldn't live with, made sure it 🚢 , and proceeded to give its 2 weeks notice (?) Which one of us is going to have to do this :) ?

[dpwiz]

The support says this is an "enhancement" waiting to be addressed.

It appears that other priorities are currently being addressed, and an ADR for this enhancement has not yet been initiated.

Perhaps it should be re-qualified as a bug? @thboop

With that in mind, please rest assured that the engineers take this feedback seriously and it will be considered for future ADRs.

After all those years I've started to doubt that...

[mistercrunch]

The indirect solution might be to introduce a linter/lint rule that makes this issue appear in one of the repos where GitHub employees are active :)

[SomeoneIsWorking]

@github I wanna pay you to allow me to hide this. Please.

[ahbarnett]

I agree. Please allow this "feature" to be disabled in the web interface.