Reviews

The reviews feature runs on pull request events, including pull_request_review, so it re-evaluates whenever a review is submitted or dismissed. It is enabled by a reviews section.

roles:
  maintainers: [octocat, hubot, monalisa]
  trustedBots: ["dependabot[bot]"]

reviews:
  gate:
    outside: 2
    maintainer: 1
  requestApprovals:
    docs:
      reviewers: ["@monalisa"]
      when:
        condition:
          - type: filesMatch
            condition: "docs/**"
  automaticApprove:
    dependabot:
      message: Approved automatically for a dependency update.
      when:
        condition:
          - type: creatorMatches
            condition: "^dependabot\\[bot\\]$"

The review gate

gate sets how many maintainer approvals a pull request needs before merge:

Key	Default	Applies when
`outside`	`2`	The author is not a maintainer.
`maintainer`	`1`	The author is a maintainer.

Each maintainer’s latest decisive review counts: comments and pending reviews are ignored, and a later change request or dismissal withdraws an approval. The author’s own review never counts.

While fewer than two distinct maintainers are listed in roles.maintainers (logins compare ignoring case and a leading @), the gate is open and records a notice: the owner merges at their discretion.
Pull requests from trusted bots skip the gate, with a notice.
Too few approvals is an error with the rule id REVIEW, linking to GOVERNANCE.md#review under links.policyBase.

Make the smartcloud / reviews check required in the branch ruleset to enforce the gate.

Requested reviewers

Each entry in requestApprovals requests reviews from its reviewers when its when passes. The pull request’s author is left out, as GitHub rejects a request for your own review, and so is anyone who has already reviewed, since a new request would put them back on the pending list. A leading @ on a login is optional.

Automatic approval

Each entry in automaticApprove approves the pull request when its when passes, with its message as the review body (default: “Approved automatically by smartcloud.”). One approval is made per run, by the first rule that passes. smartcloud does not approve again while any reviewer’s standing review is an approval, so new pushes do not stack approvals. Once a stale approval is dismissed, the next run approves again.

Pull requests from forks

A pull request from a fork runs with a read-only token, so GitHub forbids requesting reviewers and approving. Each forbidden request or approval is reported as a warning (reviews.requestApprovals or reviews.automaticApprove) rather than failing the feature, and the review gate still runs. Any other error from GitHub still fails the feature.

Getting started

Features

Running smartcloud

Maintaining smartcloud

The review gate

Requested reviewers

Automatic approval

Pull requests from forks

​The review gate

​Requested reviewers

​Automatic approval

​Pull requests from forks

The review gate

Requested reviewers

Automatic approval

Pull requests from forks