Nightly Merge Action

Automatically merge the stable branch into the development one.

If the merge is not necessary, the action will do nothing. If the merge fails due to conflicts, the action will fail, and the repository maintainer should perform the merge manually.

Installation

To enable the action simply create the .github/workflows/nightly-merge.yml file with the following content:

name: 'Nightly Merge'

on:
  schedule:
    - cron:  '0 0 * * *'

jobs:
  nightly-merge:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v1

    - name: Nightly Merge
      uses: robotology/[email protected]
      with:
        stable_branch: 'master'
        development_branch: 'devel'
        allow_ff: false
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Even though this action was created to run as a scheduled workflow, on can be replaced by any other trigger.

For example, this will run the action whenever something is pushed on the master branch:

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

This will add a button to the action to trigger it manually:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

Parameters

stable_branch

The name of the stable branch (default master).

development_branch

The name of the development branch (default devel).

allow_ff

Allow fast forward merge (default false). If not enabled, merges will use --no-ff.

allow_git_lfs

Allow support for repositories that use git lfs (default false).

ff_only

Refuse to merge and exit unless the current HEAD is already up to date or the merge can be resolved as a fast-forward (default false). Requires allow_ff=true.

allow_forks

Allow action to run on forks (default false).

merge_opts

Specify any additional options to the git merge command (default "").

on_success_trigger

Trigger another workflow action if we successfully merged something (requires on_success_trigger_ref). This should be set to the github API path of the form: /repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/workflows/{workflow_id}/dispatches. Workflow ID may be the file name of the workflow, eg. my_action.yml. The target action must have workflow_dispatch: in its on: section. More information available here: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/reference/actions#create-a-workflow-dispatch-event

on_success_trigger_ref

Ref parameter to workflow action API (default: 'master'). See the above documentation for more information.

user_name

User name for git commits (default GitHub Nightly Merge Action).

user_email

User email for git commits (default [email protected]).

push_token

Environment variable containing the token to use for push (default GITHUB_TOKEN). Useful for pushing on protected branches. Using a secret to store this variable value is strongly recommended, since this value will be printed in the logs. The GITHUB_TOKEN is still used for API calls, therefore both token should be available.

      with:
        push_token: 'FOO_TOKEN'
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        FOO_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.FOO_TOKEN }}

api_token

Environment variable containing the token to use for on_success_trigger api call (default GITHUB_TOKEN). Make sure to include it in your env: section.