Convention for merging outside contributions with GitHub PRs?

Project Infrastructure Code Review
1

With GitHub PRs now being enabled for a week, I am already seeing contributions and PRs from people that do not have write access to the repo. Such users require a contributor to click the “Squash and merge” button (or equivalent gh command) for them.

I am now wondering what the convention around who and when this should be done. The docs for reviewing on Phabricator instructed people to state on the review if they do not have write-access and to put their git author line for attribution.

With GitHub PRs, the git author line becomes redundant as the commit in the fork already has all attribution. Whether someone has write access can also be checked a lot easier as the GitHub PR will have a “Member” batch:

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This batch is missing for outside contributions. First time contributors are even nicely shown:
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I am now wondering, should outside contributors have to explicitly comment whether they want their merges changed, or should whoever is accepting the PR be responsible for merging it if they see this is an outside contributor and that consensus has been reached?

2

I am wonder if a GitHub action couldn’t comment on the PR when it is approved and the author does not have commit access to invite the reviewer to consider about the merging process.

1 Like
3

I love that idea! If that is possible that’d be great.

4

Whether it’s automatically or by the original contributor, I think it’s important that an explicit request is made to merge a PR when the contributor can’t. Otherwise, I think it should be assumed that the contributor will merge it themselves.