Distributed Git Flow - GitHub Action

A GitHub action implementation to support Distributed Git Flow.

This action automatically raises the PRs to sync the upstream branch changes with the corresponding downstream branches. It will take care of merging this PR without any manual intervention if there is no merge conflict. In case of any merge conflicts, it notifies the respective squad via Slack. It also reports the squads on PR create and merge.

GitHub Action Configuration

To configure this action on a GitHub repository, you need two secrets

• GH_APP_CREDENTIALS_TOKEN - A GitHub Action Credentials token that can be obtained by following this tutorial. This GitHub App requires the following permissions

  • Contents - Read & Write
  • Metadata - Read Only
  • Pull Requests - Read & Write

• SLACK_BOT_TOKEN - A Slack Bot Token, that can be obtained by creating a new app in your slack workspace with the chat:write OAuth Permission. After creating the slack app, make sure you are creating the required squad's slack channels in your slack workspace and add this newly created slack app to those channels. For example, if you have two squads, mantis and viper, then you need the following channels

  • master - To notify the PR open/close changes on the master branch
  • staging-mantis - To notify the PR open/close changes and merge conflicts on the staging/mantis branch
  • develop-mantis - To notify the PR open/close changes and merge conflicts on the develop/mantis branch
  • staging-viper - To notify the PR open/close changes and merge conflicts on the staging/viper branch
  • develop-viper - To notify the PR open/close changes and merge conflicts on the develop/viper branch

# .github/workflows/pr.yml
name: On PR Status Change
on:
  pull_request:
      types:
        - opened
        - closed
      branches:  
        - master  
        - 'staging/**'
        - 'develop/**'
# env:
#   SLACK_CHANNEL_PREFIX: test  <- an optional prefix for the slack channel names. Eg. test-staging-mantis, test-develop-viper
jobs:
  prStatusChange:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Obtain GitHub App Installation Access Token
        id: githubAppAuth
        run: |
          TOKEN="$(npx obtain-github-app-installation-access-token ci ${{ secrets.GH_APP_CREDENTIALS_TOKEN }})"
          echo "::set-output name=GH_APP_TOKEN::$TOKEN"
      - uses: chargebee/distributed-gitflow@master
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ steps.githubAppAuth.outputs.GH_APP_TOKEN }}
          SLACK_BOT_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SLACK_BOT_TOKEN }}

What it does

After successful configuration of this GitHub action as mentioned above, it will take care of automating all the manual work needed in keeping all the protected branches in sync as mentioned in the Distributed Git Flow document.

Adding Labels To PR

• Upon PR creation, it creates a label on the PR with the name of the base (from) branch. It will enable to filter the PRs based on the labels.

On PR merge to master

• Upon merging a PR to master, it will create a PR to all the squad's staging branch staging/{squad_name}
• if a PR already exists, it won't create any new PR
• Notifies on slack's master channel

On PR merge to staging/{squad_name}

• Upon merging a PR to staging/{squad_name}, it will create a PR to the corresponding squad's develop branch develop/{squad_name}
• if a PR already exists, it won't create any new PR
• Notifies on slack's staging/{squad_name} channel
• if the PR is not from the master or the develop/{squad_name} branch, the base (from) branch will be deleted.

On PR merge to develop/{squad_name}

• Notifies on slack's develop/{squad_name} channel
• • if the PR is not from the staging/{squad_name} branch, the base (from) branch will be deleted.

On PR create to staging/{squad_name}

• Notifies on slack's staging/{squad_name} channel
• If the PR is from the master branch, it will be automatically merged. In case of merge conflicts, the PR will be closed and notifies about the merge conflict on the staging/{squad_name} channel

On PR create to develop/{squad_name}

• Notifies on slack's develop/{squad_name} channel
• If the PR is from the corresponding staging branch, it will be automatically merged. In case of merge conflicts, the PR will be closed and notifies about the merge conflict on the develop/{squad_name} channel

How to make changes and deploy

1. create a new branch
2. make the required changes and build the package using the npm run release command.
3. raise a PR to the master branch
4. After the PR merge, the updated GitHub action can be a accessed from chargebee/distributed-gitflow@master