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Ali nazari
Ali nazari

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CODEOWNERS File: What’s the Buzz?

So, picture this: we’ve got this huge project on GitHub, right? Loads of folks are chipping in and working on it non-stop. 👨🏻‍💻👩🏻‍💻👩🏻‍💻👩🏻‍💻👨🏻‍💻

Now, let’s say we need to raise a new issue, whether it’s about a bug or a cool new idea. How do I figure out who’s in charge of a specific part of the code and who I should assign to the Assignees section? 🙁

It’s pretty handy when the project’s developers have this stuff sorted out. 🧐

We can make a file named CODEOWNERS without any file extension and put it in the .github directory at the project’s root.

Like the official doc says:

You can use a CODEOWNERS file to define individuals or teams that are responsible for code in a repository.

Where and how do we set up this file? 🗃️

To get a CODEOWNERS file up and running, just whip up a new file named CODEOWNERS in either the .github/, root, or docs/ directory of your repository, in the branch where you want to assign the code owners.

If there are CODEOWNERS files in multiple spots, GitHub will check them in that sequence and grab the first one it hits.

You can check out an example of a CODEOWNERS file in the documentation. However, let’s say we have a repository with only one owner.

the only thing that we have to do is write this line :

* @YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME

CODEOWNERS file

After saving the file, every time you create an issue, your profile will pop up in the Assignees section, making things super convenient for users checking out your project.

CODEOWNERS file result

You can really work wonders with this file, by the way. Hope that was helpful! 🫡

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