Differentiate HTTP status codes in branch existence checks

[Copilot]

The elastic/active-branches action reports "branch does not exist" for all non-200 HTTP responses when checking GitHub API, conflating 404 (not found) with 401 (auth failure), 403 (forbidden), 500+ (server errors), etc.

Changes

elastic/active-branches/script.py

• Added specific error messages for HTTP status codes:
  • 404: Branch does not exist
  • 401: Authentication failed, check GITHUB_TOKEN
  • 403: Access forbidden, check permissions
  • 500+: Server error, GitHub API issues
  • Other: Unexpected error with status code

.gitignore

• Excluded Python cache artifacts

Example

Before:

Branch 8.15 does not exist in the repository  # Could be 404, 403, 500...

After:

Access forbidden for branch 8.15 (HTTP 403). Check permissions.

The functional behavior remains unchanged—non-200 responses still exclude branches from results.

Warning

Firewall rules blocked me from connecting to one or more addresses (expand for details)

I tried to connect to the following addresses, but was blocked by firewall rules:

• https://api.github.com/graphql
  • Triggering command: /usr/bin/gh gh pr view 459 --json statusCheckRollup --local de/node/bin/rust--64 credential.helpeas (http block)
• https://api.github.com/repos/elastic/oblt-actions/actions/workflows
  • Triggering command: /usr/bin/gh gh workflow list x64/pkg/include -c x64/src/runtime/cgo (http block)

If you need me to access, download, or install something from one of these locations, you can either:

• Configure Actions setup steps to set up my environment, which run before the firewall is enabled
• Add the appropriate URLs or hosts to the custom allowlist in this repository's Copilot coding agent settings (admins only)

Original prompt

---

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>Improve error handling for elastic/oblt-actions/updatecli/run@v1</issue_title>
<issue_description>The action elastic/oblt-actions/updatecli/run@v1 currently has a catch-all non 200 codes as "branch does not exists". This is not always the case and is confusing.

We ned to branch the different http codes (400, 500...) and output a clearer message in a non-200 error.

The intent is to increase the resiliency in the future, but for now we should produce a better error and debugging experience. </issue_description>

Comments on the Issue (you are @copilot in this section)

• Fixes Improve error handling for elastic/oblt-actions/updatecli/run@v1 #458

---

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR improves the elastic/active-branches composite action’s branch existence filtering by providing differentiated, more actionable log messages for non-200 GitHub API responses, instead of treating all failures as “branch does not exist”.

Changes:

• Added status-code-specific logging for branch existence checks (401/403/404/5xx/other).
• Kept functional filtering behavior the same (only HTTP 200 branches are retained).
• Updated .gitignore to exclude Python bytecode/cache artifacts.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
elastic/active-branches/script.py	Adds differentiated messages for non-200 GitHub API responses during branch existence checks.
.gitignore	Ignores Python __pycache__ and .pyc/.pyo artifacts.

[v1v]

LGTM. Thanks

[fr4nc1sc0-r4m0n]

LGTM

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 1 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

[Copilot]

In the HTTP 403 branch, the two adjacent f-strings in the print(...) call will be implicitly concatenated without any separator, resulting in output like ...(HTTP 403).This may be... (missing space/newline). Add an explicit space/newline (or pass multiple args to print) so the message is readable.

Suggested change

	f"Access forbidden for branch {branch} (HTTP 403)."
	f"This may be due to rate limiting or missing permissions."
	)
	if rate_limit_remaining is not None or rate_limit_reset is not None:
	print(
	f"X-RateLimit-Remaining={rate_limit_remaining}"
	f"Access forbidden for branch {branch} (HTTP 403). "
	f"This may be due to rate limiting or missing permissions."
	)
	if rate_limit_remaining is not None or rate_limit_reset is not None:
	print(
	f"X-RateLimit-Remaining={rate_limit_remaining} "

[Copilot]

The rate-limit debug print(...) also uses adjacent f-strings, so the values will run together (e.g., X-RateLimit-Remaining=0X-RateLimit-Reset=...). Additionally, if only one of the headers is present the other will print as None. Consider printing only the headers that are present and separating them clearly (space/comma/newline).

Suggested change

	if rate_limit_remaining is not None or rate_limit_reset is not None:
	print(
	f"X-RateLimit-Remaining={rate_limit_remaining}"
	f"X-RateLimit-Reset={rate_limit_reset}"
	)
	rate_limit_headers = []
	if rate_limit_remaining is not None:
	rate_limit_headers.append(
	f"X-RateLimit-Remaining={rate_limit_remaining}"
	)
	if rate_limit_reset is not None:
	rate_limit_headers.append(f"X-RateLimit-Reset={rate_limit_reset}")
	if rate_limit_headers:
	print(", ".join(rate_limit_headers))