Slack: /github subscribe seems to randomly forget subscription

[francescov1]

Our team is able to successfully connect, setup and subscribe to GitHub, but after some time (seems to be anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours) the subscription is disconnected. We've been through this process multiple times, trying various different channels and repositories.

I should note that we recently migrated our repositories from an invidivual GitHub account to an Org account. Prior to the migration, our integrations worked fine. We completely uninstalled the app/integration prior to migrating and re-added it once complete. Since then, we have consistently run into this issue.

Screenshot below shows that we were successfully subscribed to the repository and later that day mysteriously lost the subscription. Again, we've gone through this process multiple times and have always had the same result since we moved to the Org account.

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[shoesCodeFor]

I'm seeing this same behavior.

[j4mie]

We're seeing this too.

It appears to be totally random: it's not affecting all repos, but once a repo starts being "forgotten" then I can't make it "stick" from that point forward. I run /github subscribe dabapps/<repo> and then run /github subscribe list and it's there, but then 10 minutes later I run /github subscribe list again and it's gone.

Not sure where to start with debugging this. I'm not even sure if it's a Github or Slack problem..

[shoesCodeFor]

In my case @j4mie , it was some kind of issue where the channel in Slack would not allow integration to be added a second time. The channel had a previous Github integration installed and once it was removed it would not function correctly when added again. I was able to create a new channel in Slack and the integration worked perfectly.

[j4mie]

Thanks @shoesCodeFor but I don't think that's the issue in this case. As far as I know the integration has only been installed in the channel once. The behaviour you're describing still sounds like a bug, too..

[Mortefal]

Having the same issue

[kmangla9]

Have the same issue.

[shoesCodeFor]

So after noodling on this for a bit I wonder if the ownership of the channel is a factor. With the free version of Slack there is no way to set Channel owners and I would presume that whoever creates the channel 'owns' it. In the Enterprise version you can set multiple owners for a channel and maybe that circumvents this behavior. One more useful testing method I have found is trying to subscribe to the Github repo of your choosing in the DM channel with yourself. If the integration works on your DM channel I think it would be safe to identify the cause as something in the ownership structure of channels that exists in Slack. Maybe this is not helpful, but I spent a couple of hours trying to resolve this and it works for me 100% of the time if I create a new channel and add the integration to that channel. If another user creates the channel I am able to reproduce the bug.

[j4mie]

Interesting @shoesCodeFor. I'm still not convinced that's the cause in our case. The channel _is_ owned by someone else, but the integration worked fine for several weeks, and then stopped working randomly without us changing anything, and now won't work at all.