In Azure Repos or GitHub, a proposal to merge one branch into another, at which point reviewers and branch policies or protection rules come into play.
Also called PR.
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In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Pull request in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Azure Repos
Azure DevOps' version control: Git (and legacy centralised TFVC), guarded by branch permissions and policies. GitHub's counterpart is its repositories.
- MERGE
A SQL command that compares a source with a target table and, depending on whether rows match, inserts, updates or deletes them. Fabric Warehouse supports it as generally available, and Spark SQL offers MERGE INTO for Delta tables.
- Branch policies
Requirements a pull request must meet on an Azure Repos branch, such as minimum reviewers, resolved comments, linked work items, status checks and build validation. GitHub offers rulesets and branch protection rules for this.
Related terms
- AB# mention
Type
AB#and a work item number in a GitHub issue, pull request or commit to link Azure Boards items; preceding it with fix, fixes or fixed changes the item's state on merge to the default branch. Azure Repos uses just#and the number. - Auto-merge
Once enabled for a repository, this GitHub option merges a pull request by itself as soon as its required reviews and status checks succeed. Azure Repos calls the same idea auto-complete.
- Base branch
Target of a pull request's merge; GitHub uses this branch's copy of CODEOWNERS.
- Build expiration
Decides how long a passing pull request build stays valid once the target branch moves on: never expiring, a number of hours, or expiring at once.
- Build validation
Requires a passing pipeline run on a pull request's pre-merge result before completion, valid until its build expiration lapses; an Azure Repos branch policy.
- Bypass policies when completing pull requests
A branch permission in Azure Repos that allows someone to override failing branch policies and complete the pull request anyway.
- Cherry-pick
Copying chosen commits to a different branch. Hotfixes often reach release branches this way: from a pull request, Azure Repos branches off the target into a topic branch and opens another pull request.
- Commit mention work item resolution
With this Azure Repos option (enabled by default), completing a pull request into the default branch transitions work items its commits mention with fix, fixes or fixed. Squash merges are the exception.