Scheduling Merges

Mastering the art of timing your pull request merges with Mergify's scheduling features.

Effectively managing when pull requests are merged is crucial for maintaining a smooth workflow. Mergify offers various features to schedule merges, providing flexibility and control over your project’s integration process. This document outlines how you can schedule your merges using different Mergify features, including the schedule condition, current-datetime condition, Merge-After feature, and Depends-On feature.

Scheduling Merges During Work Hours

Section titled Scheduling Merges During Work Hours

The schedule condition allows you to define specific times during the week when merges should occur. This is particularly useful for avoiding merges during off-hours or weekends.

pull_request_rules:
  - name: merge during work hours
    conditions:
      - schedule = Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00[Europe/Paris]
    actions:
      merge:

In this example, pull requests will only be merged on weekdays between 09:00 and 17:00 Paris time.

Avoid Merges on Specific Dates

Section titled Avoid Merges on Specific Dates

The current-datetime condition can be used to include or exclude specific dates or times in your merge automation. It supports being compared to a timestamp or a timestamp interval.

pull_request_rules:
  - name: avoid merges on specific dates
    conditions:
      - current-datetime != XXXX-01-01T00:00/XXXX-01-01T23:59[Europe/Paris]
    actions:
      merge:

This rule prevents merges from occurring on January 1st.

Delay Merge Until a Future Date

Section titled Delay Merge Until a Future Date

You can use the Merge-After pull request header to merge a pull request after a certain date.

Ading 'Merge-After: 2023-12-25T00:00' in the pull request body on GitHub

Mergify automatically injects the current-datetime >= condition in any rules that contain the merge or queue action.

Seeing mergify's rules summary on GitHub, emphasizing on the condition saying won't merge until provided date

Using Depends-On to Manage Merge Dependencies

Section titled Using Depends-On to Manage Merge Dependencies

Depends-On ensures a pull request is only merged after another specified pull request has been successfully merged. This is useful for managing dependencies between pull requests.

Adding 'Depends-On: #973' in pull request body on GitHub

Mergify automatically injects the depends-on condition in any rules that contain the merge or queue action.

Seeing depends on condition in the pull request summary.

This rule ensures that the pull request will only be merged after PR #973 is merged.

By using these scheduling features, you can efficiently manage your project’s merge workflow, ensuring that merges happen at the most appropriate times and in the correct order. This not only streamlines your development process but also helps in maintaining stability and continuity in your project.