GitHub Issue Mover

A tool to migrate GitHub issues from one repository to another, preserving labels, comments, assignees, and original author attribution.

Prerequisites

• Ballerina 2201.13.1 or later
• A GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT) with repo scope for both the source and target repositories

Setup

Create a Config.toml file in the project root:

githubToken = "ghp_your_personal_access_token"
sourceRepo = "owner/repo"
targetRepo = "owner/repo"
closeSourceIssue = false
addTargetLabels = "LabelInTargetRepo"
addSourceLabels = "LabelInSourceRepo"

Field	Description
githubToken	GitHub PAT with repo scope
sourceRepo	Source repository in owner/repo format
targetRepo	Destination repository in owner/repo format
closeSourceIssue	Set to true to close source issues after import
addTargetLabels	Comma-separated labels to add to issues in the target repo (e.g. "migrated,imported")
addSourceLabels	Comma-separated labels to add to issues in the source repo (e.g. "moved")

Usage

Import all open issues:

bal run -- all

Import specific issues by number:

bal run -- 123 456 789

Import all issues with a specific label:

bal run -- label=bug

Example

What gets migrated

• Issue title and body
• Labels (missing labels are auto-created in the target repo with the same color and description)
• Comments (re-posted with original author attribution — avatar, username, timestamp, and link to original comment)
• Assignees
• Pull requests are automatically excluded when importing all issues

Notes

• Only open issues are fetched when using all or label= modes
• Comments cannot be posted as the original author due to GitHub API limitations. Instead, each comment is prefixed with a header crediting the original author
• Imports up to 100 issues per run when using all or label= modes