Skip to content
outstaffoutstaffOutstaff

0023: A ticket closes once the checks on its merge commit pass

Status: accepted. Replaces the merge row of 0016’s policy table (“pr.merged into the default branch: ticket to done”) and, from 0011, the rule that ost pr open refuses a ticket with a merged pull request.

Context

Section titled “Context”

merged_closes_ticket moved a ticket to done the moment its pull request merged. Checks that run on the merge commit in the default branch, such as a deploy workflow, were not considered. In live use a deploy failed on a configuration error after the merge; the ticket was already done, the agent noticed only by chance, and it could not read why the deploy failed, because agents have no access to the CI’s logs. A human had to fetch the error from the run. The fix then needed a new pull request, which ost pr open refused, because the ticket already had a merged one.

Decision

Section titled “Decision”
  • The work state follows the checks on the merge commit of every pull request it sees merge into the default branch, from the store, so across restarts, and raises one event per merge: pr.merge_checks_failed when a check fails, is cancelled or times out, or is still running after policies.merge_checks.timeout_minutes; pr.merge_checks_passed when every check finished without failing and no new one appeared for policies.merge_checks.settle_minutes, so a workflow that starts after the first ones finish is still waited for, or when none started within policies.merge_checks.wait_for_start_minutes.
  • merged_closes_ticket acts on pr.merge_checks_passed, with the conditions it had on pr.merged.
  • A failed check wakes the ticket’s agent (merge_checks_failed_to_agent, kind merge_checks_failed): the pull request’s author, or, for a human’s pull request, the agent the ticket is assigned to, else the one who last worked on it. With none, the event is dropped and the trace says why. The ticket stays open.
  • The office reads the log for the agent with its own code host credentials: the wake carries the end of the failed step’s log, bounded, with secrets masked and marked as data, and ost ci log <check link> reads more through the office, for the team’s repositories only. Agents need no CI access of their own.
  • One open pull request per ticket. ost pr open refuses a ticket with another open pull request, or one that is done or canceled. A merged one does not count while the ticket is open, so the fix goes on the same ticket.

Consequences

Section titled “Consequences”
  • A ticket closes a few minutes after its merge instead of at once: at least the settle time when checks ran, the wait for a first check when none did.
  • The office’s GitHub App needs Actions: read; the doctor reports it when it is missing.
  • A check that never reports on the merge commit, or reports after the wait for a first check, is not waited for.