av: CLI to manage Stacked PRs

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av is a command-line tool that helps you manage your stacked PRs on GitHub. It allows you to create a PR stacked on top of another PR, and it will automatically update the dependent PR when the base PR is updated. Read more at Rethinking code reviews with stacked PRs.

Community

Join our discord community: https://discord.gg/TFgtZtN8

Features

• Create a PR that is stacked on another PR.
• Visualize the entire stack of PRs.
• Interactively navigate through the PR stack.
• Rebase the dependent PR when the base PR is updated.
• Remove the merged PRs from the stack.
• Split a PR into multiple PRs.
• Split a commit into multiple commits.
• Reorder the PRs and commits in the stack.

Demo

Usage

Tip

Complete documentation is available at docs.aviator.co.

Create a new branch and make some changes:

$ av stack branch feature-1
$ echo "Hello, world!" > hello.txt
$ git add hello.txt
$ git commit -m "Add hello.txt"

Create a PR:

$ av pr create

Create a new branch and make some changes. Create another PR that depends on the previous PR:

$ av stack branch feature-2
$ echo "Another feature" >> hello.txt
$ git add hello.txt
$ git commit -m "Update hello.txt"
$ av pr create

Visualize the PR stack:

$ av stack tree
  * feature-2 (HEAD)
  │ https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/pull/2
  │
  * feature-1
  │ https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/pull/1
  │
  * master

Merge the first PR:

$ gh pr merge feature-1

Sync the stack:

$ av stack sync

  ✓ GitHub fetch is done
  ✓ Restack is done

    * ✓ feature-2 f9d85fe
    │
    * master 7fd1a60

  ✓ Pushed to GitHub

    Following branches do not need a push.

      feature-1: PR is already merged.

    Following branches are pushed.

      feature-2
        Remote: dbae4bd Update hello.txt 2024-06-11 16:41:18 -0700 -0700 (2 minutes ago)
        Local:  f9d85fe Update hello.txt 2024-06-11 16:43:41 -0700 -0700 (7 seconds ago)
        PR:     https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/pull/2

  ✓ Deleted the merged branches

    Following merged branches are deleted.

      feature-1: f2335eec783b54226a7ab90f4af1c9b8309f8b61

Installation

av is available for macOS and Linux. In order to interact with GitHub, av uses the GitHub API token. If you have GitHub CLI installed, av will use the token automatically from the GitHub CLI. It is recommended to install both.

macOS

brew install gh aviator-co/tap/av

Arch Linux (AUR)

Published as av-cli-bin in AUR.

yay av-cli

Debian/Ubuntu

Download the .deb file from the releases page.

apt install ./av_$VERSION_linux_$ARCH.deb

RPM-based systems

Download the .rpm file from the releases page.

rpm -i ./av_$VERSION_linux_$ARCH.rpm

Binary download

Download the binary from the releases page.

Setup

1. Set up the GitHub CLI for GitHub authentication:

   gh auth login

   Or you can create a Personal Access Token as described in the Configuration section.

2. Set up the av CLI autocompletion:

   # Bash
   source <(av completion bash)
   # Zsh
   source <(av completion zsh)

3. Initialize the repository:

   av init

Example commands

Command	Description
av stack branch	Create a new child branch from the current branch.
av stack restack	Rebase the branches to their parents.
av pr create	Create or update a PR.
av stack tree	Visualize the PRs.
av stack sync --all	Fetch and rebase all branches.
av stack adopt	Adopt a branch that is not created from av stack branch.
av stack reparent	Change the parent of the current branch.
av stack switch	Check out branches interactively.
av stack reorder	Reorder the branches.
av commit amend	Amend the last commit and rebase the children.
av commit split	Split the last commit.

How it works

av internally keeps tracks of the PRs, their associated branches and their dependent branches. For each branch, it remembers where the branch started (the base commit of the branch). When the base branch is updated, av rebases the dependent branches on top of the new base branch using the remembered starting point as the merge base.

Learn more

• Rethinking code reviews with stacked PRs
• Issue Tracker
• Changelog