Improve repository-status workflow reliability and add scheduling

[igorpecovnik]

This commit significantly improves the robustness of the kernel version fetching workflow with the following changes:

Reliability improvements:

• Add retry logic with exponential backoff for network operations (curl, apt-get)
• Improve version parsing with proper semver validation regex
• Add explicit error handling for git fetch (removed || true)
• Add git push retry with automatic rebase on conflicts
• Add comprehensive version format validation

Workflow triggers:

• Add cron schedule to run daily at 2:15 AM UTC
• Add workflow_dispatch for manual execution
• Remove repository_dispatch trigger (simplified)

Other improvements:

• Fix concurrency group naming from "redirector" to "repository-status"
• Add comprehensive documentation header
• Add better logging with detected versions output
• Add helpful error messages for debugging

[coderabbitai]

Caution

Review failed

The pull request is closed.

Walkthrough

The GitHub Actions workflow at .github/workflows/repository-status.yaml was rewritten to run daily (cron) and via workflow_dispatch, renamed "Data: Fetch Armbian kernel versions", and moved concurrency group to repository-status. Network operations gained a retry wrapper applied to APT key fetch and apt-get update. Kernel versions are extracted via apt search with validation (non-empty + semver). Generated badges and kernel-versions.json are produced, placed under data/, and the workflow robustly fetches or creates the data branch (orphan if missing). Git commit/push now uses configured author, conditional commits, push retries with pull --rebase on conflict, and final repository_dispatch with type "Web: Directory listing".

Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~30 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• Improve repository-status workflow reliability and add scheduling #170: Makes largely the same changes to .github/workflows/repository-status.yaml (retry logic, scheduled trigger, semver parsing, data branch/git push improvements).
• Fetch Armbian kernel package versions from beta repository #67: Refactors the same workflow to fetch Armbian kernel versions and generate badges/JSON with commit/push behavior.
• Reorganize and rename workflow files with category prefixes #115: Updates workflow dispatch/event types and reorganizes repository-dispatch behavior related to publishing data.

Suggested reviewers

• armbianworker

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately summarizes the main changes: improving workflow reliability through retry mechanisms and adding scheduling via cron triggers.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is directly related to the changeset, detailing reliability improvements, workflow trigger changes, and other enhancements made to the repository-status workflow.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

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✨ Finishing touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch feature/improve-repository-status-workflow

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Review profile: CHILL

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 1a62e41 and 8d7c6cb.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• .github/workflows/repository-status.yaml

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 3

🤖 Fix all issues with AI agents

In @.github/workflows/repository-status.yaml:
- Line 64: The current retry only covers the curl process; wrap the whole
pipeline so failures in gpg --dearmor also trigger retries by invoking retry
with a shell command that runs the full pipeline (the existing line containing
"retry curl -fsSL https://apt.armbian.com/armbian.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o
\"$KEYRING\"") instead of just curl, or implement a small retry loop around the
combined "curl ... | sudo gpg --dearmor -o \"$KEYRING\"" operation so both curl
and gpg errors are retried.
- Around line 14-19: The workflow currently uses an unfiltered push trigger
("push:") which causes runs on every push; update the on: block to either remove
the "push:" key entirely if only scheduled and manual runs are desired, or
replace it with a filtered push trigger (e.g., "push: { branches: [ 'main',
'release' ] }" or include a "paths:" filter) so only specific branches/paths
trigger the workflow; edit the top-level "on:" stanza that contains push,
schedule, and workflow_dispatch to apply the chosen change.
- Around line 110-123: The fetch+exit logic makes the orphan branch creation
unreachable because a failed git fetch origin data exits early; instead allow
the script to continue on fetch failure and detect the remote branch via git
ls-remote or by silencing fetch. Replace the current `git fetch origin data`
block so it does not exit on failure (e.g., `git fetch origin data || true`), or
use `git ls-remote --heads origin data` to decide whether `origin/data` exists,
then keep the existing `git rev-parse --verify origin/data` check and fall
through to `git checkout --orphan data` and `git rm -rf . || true` when the
remote branch is absent.

🧹 Nitpick comments (1)

.github/workflows/repository-status.yaml (1)

104-163: Missing set -euo pipefail in commit step.

Unlike the previous step, this run block doesn't set strict error handling. If git pull --rebase fails (e.g., merge conflicts), the script continues silently. Consider adding strict mode at the top of this step:

Suggested addition

       - name: Commit changes if any
         run: |
 
+          set -euo pipefail
+
           cd armbian.github.io

And handle rebase failures explicitly:

               # Pull with rebase to resolve conflicts
               echo "Push failed, attempting to pull and rebase..." >&2
-              git pull --rebase origin data
+              if ! git pull --rebase origin data; then
+                echo "Rebase failed, aborting..." >&2
+                git rebase --abort || true
+                exit 1
+              fi

📜 Review details

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Disabled knowledge base sources:

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You can enable these sources in your CodeRabbit configuration.

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between f45d4d1 and 1a62e41.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• .github/workflows/repository-status.yaml

🧰 Additional context used

🧠 Learnings (1)

📚 Learning: 2025-11-04T22:48:41.167Z

Learnt from: igorpecovnik
Repo: armbian/armbian.github.io PR: 85
File: .github/workflows/generate-keyring-data.yaml:75-85
Timestamp: 2025-11-04T22:48:41.167Z
Learning: In `.github/workflows/generate-keyring-data.yaml` for the Armbian project: `ubuntu-keyring-ports` is intentionally optional because they're not certain it's needed, while `debian-ports-archive-keyring` must be mandatory because it's always available in Debian sid and is required for the project.

Applied to files:

• .github/workflows/repository-status.yaml

🔇 Additional comments (5)

.github/workflows/repository-status.yaml (5)

1-12: LGTM!

Clear and comprehensive documentation header explaining the workflow's purpose, requirements, and outputs.

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45-61: LGTM!

Well-implemented retry function with exponential backoff (5s → 10s → 20s). Good use of local variables and proper exit codes.

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78-95: LGTM!

Good improvements: retry for apt-get, explicit semver validation with ^[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$, and helpful diagnostic output on failure.

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165-169: LGTM!

Repository dispatch step is correctly configured with a descriptive event type.

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31-35: No action required — actions/checkout@v6 is the current stable release.

The workflow correctly uses the official, actively maintained version of the checkout action. This is the current major release with no known issues.

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