fix(issues): handle null user on comments

[flipbit03]

Summary

1. Fix: handle null comment.user in issue transform

Linear issues can have comments where the user field is null. This happens with automated or externally-synced comments — for example, comments created by the GitHub integration that mirror PR activity into Linear. These comments have no associated Linear user, so the API returns user: null.

Previously, doTransformIssueData accessed comment.user.id and comment.user.name unconditionally, causing a crash:

Cannot read properties of null (reading 'id')

This made linearis issues read unusable on any issue that had such comments.

Changes:

• Add null check for comment.user in doTransformIssueData, matching the existing ternary pattern used for other nullable fields (assignee, project, cycle, etc.)
• Mark user as optional in both the LinearIssue.comments type and LinearComment interface in linear-types.d.ts
• Add unit test verifying both the null-user and present-user cases

2. Add prepare script to enable git-based installs

Without a prepare script, installing linearis from a git ref fails because dist/ is gitignored and there's no build step during installation. This makes it impossible to install directly from a fork or branch.

The prepare script bootstraps the build by running npm install --ignore-scripts (to fetch all dependencies including TypeScript) followed by tsc. The npm_config_global=false env var is needed because npm's git dep preparation inherits the global install context, which would otherwise cause the inner install to recurse into global node_modules.

Note: Direct npm install -g "github:user/linearis#ref" hits a tar extraction bug in npm 11 where the packed tarball is correct but extraction silently drops files. The workaround is a two-step install via npm pack. Here's a one liner if you want to use this fork while the PR itself cooks:

npm uninstall -g linearis \
  && cd /tmp \
  && npm pack "github:flipbit03/linearis#fix/null-comment-user" \
  && npm install -g /tmp/linearis-*.tgz \
  && rm linearis-*.tgz

Test plan

• npm test — all 93 tests pass including 2 new ones
• npm run build — compiles cleanly
• linearis issues read <issue-with-github-synced-comments> — no longer crashes
• Install from git fork via npm pack + npm install -g — works end to end

[nicwise]

merged this on top of my main, and its working again! Thanks @flipbit03

[flipbit03]

@nicwise, glad to hear it helped!

I looked through the PRs and noticed mine is at least the third fixing the same issue, so things seem a bit quiet on the issue/PR tracker. Since this is an open-source project built to scratch the author’s own itch (which I totally respect), I decided to stop pushing and just build what I needed.

So I started lineark: https://github.com/flipbit03/lineark

Right now it supports read operations and uses the same token file (~/.linear_api_token), so if you already have a Personal API Token there for linearis, it should work out of the box.

I’ve also added things I felt were missing, like a proper whoami command to check which account is authenticated.

There’s a one-line installer in the README if you don’t want to install Rust, and it’s also published on Crates.io, so you can install it with cargo.

Looks like I’m scratching my own itch now too 😄

[flipbit03]

Closed my branch/PR since I don't plan on using linearis anymore. Thanks, all.