Merge rules?

[anatoly-scherbakov]

To speed up merge process, we might develop an automatically enforced rule for merges. For instance:

• If the PR is not a draft,
• If CI on the PR is green,
• If the PR is approved by at least one maintainer,
• If the PR's branch is up to date against master,
• And the PR hasn't been updated for a week,

then it merges automatically. What do you guys think?

[davidlehn]

No. Too many ways that could go wrong and cause havoc.

Better to ask nicely to get attention on PRs you want merged sooner rather than later. It's almost always a case of people being too busy to handle things in a timely manner.

[anatoly-scherbakov]

Perhaps I should step back: before proposing any automation, I will propose to define the criteria at which the PR could be merged. It seems that one approval is currently enough. Should maybe two approvals be required?

[mielvds]

Thanks @anatoly-scherbakov for proposing a set of merging rules. I agree that we need those, so maintainers feel comfortable merging. But indeed, I would not do any automation. The codebase and the collaboration between contributors are in no shape and, like @davidlehn pointed out, the risk is too high.
What manual merging is concerned, though, 'asking nicely to get attention on PRs' would be ideal, but with the current activity, I don't think it will always be realistic. Having criteria are helpful when one contributor has time, but the others don't.