Improved pull request merge experience (public preview) feedback

[willsmythe]

To help you better understand the state of your pull request and get it merged faster, the merge experience on the pull request page has been improved! This experience is currently in public preview.

What's new

We've maintained the familiar look of the existing merge experience while incorporating several usability improvements:

• Checks grouped by status: checks are now grouped by status with failing checks prioritized at the top of the list, making it easier to identify issues that need attention
• Checks ordered alphabetically: status checks are now ordered alphabetically to make it easier to find a specific check
• Commit metadata validation: errors from failing commit metadata rules (like non-compliant commit messages) can now be corrected and retried
• Improved accessibility: consistent keyboard navigation, focus management, and landmarks help make the experience more accessible to everyone

Stay tuned here for more updates

Try it out

👉 👉 👉 This experience is rolling out gradually and so is not yet available to everyone. 👈 👈 👈

Once available, you will see a Try the new merge experience link below the merge box on the pull request page:

Click it to switch to the improved experience. A link is also available for easily switching back to the existing experience. You can also toggle the experience via the feature preview dialog.

🔴 🔴 🔴 Known issues 🔴 🔴 🔴

You will run into some bugs and missing features (let us know when you do if not listed here).

Bugs

• Page refresh sometimes required to see latest status and correct actions/buttons

Recently fixed

• FIXED 2024-11-09: Enabling auto-merge fails with a "not found" error
• FIXED 2024-11-12: Admin bypass checkbox not always appearing preventing users from bypassing merge requirements
• FIXED 2024-11-14: Styling of the Delete branch button is sometimes missing (fixed by reloading the page)

Planned changes

• Restore branch button is easily confused for Delete branch. Plan: move the Restore branch button to the timeline button in this location will be Delete branch.
• Use natural/logical ordering for status checks to help with numeric matrix build ordering

Looking for feedback 🔈 🔈

• Collapse the grouping of "passing" checks by default
• Show the grouping of "in progress" status checks above the grouping of "pending"
• In the current experience, the confirmation form (which appears after clicking "merge") replaces the entire merge experience, but is simply appended in the new experience. Like? Some options:
  • Replicate the behavior of the current experience
  • Open a dialog

Missing features

Features currently missing, but are coming:

• Actions workflows requiring approval cannot be approved currently
• The browser tab icon (favicon) does not currently reflect the pull request's merge status
• Changing the commit author email when merging is not currently supported
• Command line instructions are missing
• Reviews cannot be dismissed, re-requested, etc from the review section
• Status check durations (how long a check has been running / took to run)

Feedback

We want to hear from you! Post your comments, questions, likes, and dislikes below.

[codeithuman]

Where is the "Merge without waiting for requirements to be met (bypass branch protections)" checkbox?

Old

New

[willsmythe]

I added this issue to the Known issues > Bugs section in the description above. Check there for updates and to see other issues we're tracking.

[marcellino-ornelas]

If your on the new UI and the button is not shown, if you "switch back to the classic merge experience", you see the checkbox again. Then if you change back to the new UI again, the checkbox now shows up.

[marcellino-ornelas]

Oh it might be related to draft PRs. I opened a test PR right now without going to draft and button showed up.

marcellino-ornelas/templates#246

[willsmythe]

A fix for the bypass checkbox not appearing is in the queue (should get deployed today).

There also may still be an issue with this checkbox not appearing until the page is refreshed. We're tracking this.

[willsmythe]

@codeithuman - can you check if the bypass checkbox is appearing as expected now?

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback / write-up. Definitely agree. This check box appears for some users in some scenarios, but there's clearly a bug here where it's not appearing for everyone. We're investigating.

[seesharprun]

I like this feature so far, but the only transient bug I've seen is sometimes the checks show up fine while they are processing, but once all checks have passed, they all disappear. If you select the arrow to expand, it shows an empty list. I need to refresh the browser to see the passing checks.

Again, just a small client-side issue that I'm seeing in Edge 130.0.2849.68

[willsmythe]

Thanks for reporting. If you (or anyone else) is able (and comfortable) to capture a quick video and include here as a reply, please do!

If you select the arrow to expand

Are you referring to the caret 1) on the right side of the merge box, or 2) next to "X successful checks"?

[willsmythe]

I added this issue to the Known issues > Bugs section in the description above. Check there for updates, and to see other issues we're tracking.

[chamini2]

Again, just a small client-side issue that I'm seeing in Edge 130.0.2849.68

for a second I thought you commented your IP

[thomas-bc]

The "view command line instructions" can be handy. It used to be a clickable element that extends to show CLI commands. It is not anymore. Could be good to add back in?

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. This is coming! See the Known issues > Feature gaps list above.

[tzing]

The new look on that PR successfully merged message confused me.

Its appearance is quite similar to the message of you can click this button to delete the branch on the classic pane. This look makes me wonder if the auto delete branch feature is broken.

[akaday]

The new merge message appearance is quite similar to the "delete branch" message on the classic pane, causing confusion. It makes me wonder if the auto-delete branch feature is broken. Could you please clarify or adjust the UI to make the distinction clearer? Also, it's critical to bypass branch protections for urgent hotfixes. Ensuring this functionality is available is essential for maintaining workflow efficiency.

[tzing]

This one ⬇️

In the classic layout, it shows this purple-outlined message when the branch IS NOT DELETED. But in this preview, it shows the message when the branch IS DELETED.

When I left the original comment, I was working on a repo that I assume the 'auto delete head branch' is on. That successfully merged and closed message shows and misleads me as if the branch is not deleted yet - until I read those low-lighted description.

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. We are planning to move Restore branch into the timeline to minimize confusing it for Delete branch (and because restoring the branch is not a super common task). Track this above in Known issues > Planned changes.

[kaoths]

---

The "Delete branch" button CSS/style sometimes doesn't load.
This sometimes appears after merging a PR.
It does not affect any functionalities. Just the visual issue, reloading the page fixes it.

[CantBeSubh]

I faced same issue on Arc Browser

[tarilabs]

Same problem, google chrome on Mac

[a-stankevich]

Same happens occasionally in Firefox, Windows

[kaoths]

Sorry for late reply, I'm seeing this on Arc browser.

[willsmythe]

This should be resolved now. If anyone is still experiencing this, let us know!

[getchoo]

Here is the new experience on a PR with an approval from a reviewer without write access, that has also passed all CI:

Displaying red around this feels a bit odd to me. My first thought when I see it is that CI has failed, changes have been requested, or maybe that there are required approvals/checks still being waited on? (None of these are the case in this repository, which is nixpkgs)

In comparison, the classic merge experience has a green accent:

(I also noticed the new experience shows the approval of the reviewer w/o write access. This is an awesome addition for nixpkgs, so thanks!)

The use of green lets a PR author or committer know at a glance that it should be good to merge. I'd much rather keep this behavior :)

[simon-abbott]

[shaedrich]

Maybe something like this then:

[jsoref]

It shouldn't be red. At most it's informative (gray).

[shaedrich]

I just had that discussion here: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/143787#discussioncomment-11206819

[BhaaLseN]

Adding my +1 here. Having both the symbol and the border red when nothing else inside the box is red is feels weird, as if there is something to do for someone to address an issue. As someone that simply doesn't have merge permissions, the old experience had it green (because everything's fine, no checks failed, no reviews blocking it) The only thing that "blocks" anything is me not having merge permissions.

And it feels odd to force the red border with the previous suggestions of adding a failed thing in there just to have more red.

I always saw that box at the end as "PR status (as far as the project is concerned)" and not "PR status (as far as I'm concerned)". And if someone can merge it no problem, then it should be green in my head (even if I can't merge it).

I do see some value in making this different for the PR author if it adds value for them, but as project member doing reviews I don't see the added value of bringing something to my attention in a rather distracting way that I both know of and can't do anything about myself.

[asilbek-ismoilov]

Very good

[khoatranthanh]

[willsmythe]

Thanks for reporting. We're planning to move the Restore branch button (see Known issues > Planned changes). Regarding the missing styling, this is something we're tracking for the Delete branch button too (see Known issues > Bugs).

[willsmythe]

This should be fixed now.

[halamix2]

"Enable auto-merge" button is replaced with "Squash and auto-merge" which is broken:
Instead of marking the PR to be auto-merged it simply displays "Not Found" error below the button

Console logs just displays 404 on POST to https://github.com/<org>/<repo>/pull/531/page_data/enable_auto_merge

[willsmythe]

Thanks for reporting. We're investigating.

[willsmythe]

The team is reviewing a fix for this.

[willsmythe]

A fix for this problem rolled out on Friday! 🎉

Let us know if you're still seeing this problem.

[halamix2]

It's fixed now, thanks <3

[leoskyrocker]

it's buggy and requires a page refresh before the merge button works even when all the checks are already passing, overall it feels less real time than before

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. Definitely a problem. We're investigating.

[willsmythe]

Are there any required status checks? Or just optional? Or a mix?

[dg6862]

I have the same issue. We have several optional checks and one required.

[willsmythe]

A fix is underway for this. Should deploy by early next week.

[Lamparter]

Merge is not an allowed merge method in this repository.
You're not authorized to push to this branch. Visit https://docs.github.com/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/managing-protected-branches/about-protected-branches for more information.

files-community/Files#16445

Sorry for the oversized screenshot! I noticed the text merge is not an allowed merge method in this repository in a repository I don't control - I'm assuming this isn't intended and so reporting it here.

[kennytv]

I like that the list of checks is grouped collapsed now, though when expanding it, I'd want all of them to be opened by default, including successful checks. In the example below, it currently only expands skipped checks:

I also feel like the red outline for awaiting reviews is a bit too aggressive, especially when coupled with removing so much green (no full checkmark as well as including skipped checks as gray in the outline).

[spytheman]

I do not want the list of checks to expand like that - I have over 40 jobs, and expanding just the section I clicked on, is exactly as it should be.

If I want to see/check the successful ones, I can just click on them.

[spytheman]

Checks grouped by status: checks are now grouped by status with failing checks prioritized at the top of the list, making it easier to identify issues that need attention

THANK YOU 🙇🏻‍♂️ ❤️ 🥳 !

[spytheman]

I have a repository that has over 40 jobs that are commonly running and sometimes depending on what is changed, that can grow up to 76. Previously I had to scroll/hunt for the failing jobs A LOT.
The improvement in this alone, made my daily Github experience a lot better 🥳 .

[Lukeghenco]

We are glad to hear about this. GitHub developers have infinitely more than 76 on many of our repos (as do a ton of larger repositories using GitHub), so this was something we felt would really help the DX. Thank you for the feedback.

[joshhunt]

Bringing failing checks to the top is a huge win. Thanks for this 🙌

[genintho]

Checks ordered alphabetically: status checks are now ordered alphabetically to make it easier to find a specific check

The sorting is braking. little bit when using matrix with numbers.

[willsmythe]

Totally agree. We have an internal issue tracking this. I'll add it to the list of Known issues > Planned changes above.

[RobinTail]

I like it. But I noticed a couple bugs.

When watching the ongoing checks, after they all are completed:

• the icon on the left does not turn green
• the list of the checks becomes empty

[willsmythe]

Thanks for reporting. If you refresh the page does the correct status icon appear, and can you expand the list of checks?

[kpalmvik]

The font size in the text input boxes seems to be smaller than 16px, which triggers the automatic zoom in Safari/iOS.

RPReplay_Final1731644642.mov

[TheGiraffe3]

Yep, can confirm.

[BilalJaved15]

A bug happened

Screen.Recording.2024-11-15.at.11.46.52.AM.online-video-cutter.com.mp4

[willsmythe]

Thanks for reporting. Does the list show up correctly if you refresh the page? Or are you completely unable to expand the even after refreshing?

[ball-hayden]

I keep getting confused as to why none of my actions are running, then when I scroll down I see the dependent steps are running.

Please could you move "in progress checks" above "pending checks"?

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. Ordering "in progress" before "pending" makes sense in your scenario (where you have jobs waiting on other jobs to finish). I added this to the list of things we're looking for feedback on above.

[ed-kin]

Would be really good to know how long an action has been running for from the PR itself.

It's super annoying to have to go the the action, wait for the job contents to load, then scroll, all to just see which job we are on and how long it's been running for. I want to know at a glance if we are at minute 10 or minute 24 of my 25 minute test runs.

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback. I just added this to the list of feature gaps (see above) and it's something we have for the next iteration (so should be fixed in the next week or two).

[ed-kin]

Thanks for the reply and it's great it's made the feature gap list.

Another really handy tool would be the cancellation (automatic or easy-todo) of previous running jobs.

Imagine the scenario there there are four actions running, one of which takes 25 minutes to run and one of which fails after two minutes.

In this case, I might easily see that I have forgotten to run lint, which is the action that failed, and so I run the lint locally to fix it and push up another commit, all in about 60 seconds.

In this case, there is no point for my 25 minute test running of the previous commit to continue running, as a new one has been created for the new commit anyway. I can go into the actions tab and cancel it, but that takes a number of clicks, I have to cancel each task one by one, and I never bother.

Ideal behaviour for here for me would be for any runners on a previous commit to be automatically cancelled if they are still running when a new commit is pushed.

[TheGiraffe3]

I believe for canceling actions you can use this in your action definition.

concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.head_ref || github.run_id }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

[ed-kin]

Ah thank you. I'll give that a go

[PowerfulBacon]

There is no button to approve status checks for first time contributors, which makes it impossible to merge their PRs. (Just saw in the main post that this is listed as coming soon)

It would also be nice if all of the actions displayed by default, since in some cases the failed/skipped expand but the successful ones don't which hides them away (We use checks to generate images for map changes in a game).

[willsmythe]

Thanks for the feedback on expanding the grouping of successful checks by default. I added this to the list of things we're looking for feedback on above.

[rithvik-doshi]

I wasn't able to dismiss a stale review through the new merge experience, I had to switch back to classic to do that. How does one see/dismiss/re-request a review in this new ui?

[Sickafant]

It would be nice if the commit metadata rule included the description of the ruleset to provide more user-friendly feedback:

Ruleset message description in user friendly terms:

The description appearing in the check block reason would help add context. Only the regex is less helpful, especially for rulesets with more complicated pattern expressions.

[kaylareopelle]

First off, I really like how this looks! The new section for failing builds is really helpful to diagnose problems on PRs with many jobs.

This might be similar to what @PowerfulBacon said, but I wanted to point out that the "Approve and Run" button for first-time contributors to a repository is missing on the new experience. This time, I hit the button without taking a screenshot, but I'll update the post with screenshots if this situation comes up again.

In the new experience, it looks like all jobs have passed if there's a job related to the org, like a CLA check, but it will show that only one job has ran. I needed to switch back to the old view to see the "Approve and Run" button to get the rest of the CI to run.

[brianmichel]

I really like the direction of the new UI, however I have some issues with how it displays the end status'

From this UI I really don't understand if my PR is mergable (I'm pretty sure it is if someone gave me a review approval), I wish this list had section like "Required checks" and an entry for each required job and it's status. If I inspect the HTML I see something like Non-required checks unsuccessful as the aria label for the icon to the left of the merge module (which is grey) and while I think this language is confusing since it doesn't tell me if the required jobs were successful it is more helpful than the rest of the UI to let me figure out if my PR is mergable.

[zumbiepig]

I cannot merge using a merge commit if I have the Require linear history rule on my branch, even though I have admin/bypass permissions. Switching back to the classic merge experience allows me to make a merge commit.

[scottjacobsen]

The required badges should be aligned.

Lack of affordances is 👎 ci/circleci: test is a link but you would never know it. That barely there -> on the right is not a standard UI element and doesn't appear clickable - it was better when it was clearly a link that said details.

[raybrownco]

The new design is coming along nicely! Keep up the great work. One nit that I had:

I expected to be able to click the entire row of any individual check in order to navigate to the check's page. Instead, I can only click on the text on the left, or on the arrow icon to the right. The space between these two elements is not interactive. In contrast, the "merge box section headers" that appear above the check rows are entirely clickable.

I typically want to click on something in this area of the page when a check has failed, so making it harder to interact with these checks is something I'd consider to be a UX regression.

Oh. One more thing: maybe try aligning the row's right-side arrow icon horizontally beneath the section header's caret icons?

Aside from that, I love where it's heading. Keep up the great work!

[RobinTail]

"Approve and run" button is missing in the new interface

Current	Featured

[TheGiraffe3]

The "view command line instructions" text doesn't work.

Before it had the merge button, and underneath "or view command line instructions". (note that the blue link is just to show the color, but doesn't actually do anything; it'll take you to GitHub's homepage)
Now it has the button and underneath says "You can also merge this with the command line, view command line instructions."

I think the old text was better. Or at least replace the comma with a period, and make the link work.