gh pr create should detect and update already existing pull requests #5792

ssbarnea · 2022-06-11T10:23:42Z

ssbarnea
Jun 11, 2022

At this moment if you run gh pr create twice, it will attempt to create a new pull request, even if one already existing.

It would be much better if gh pr create will instead update a pull request if already existing and outdated, aka by running git push.

gh is already able to detect existing pr as we can see by running a command like gh pr ready.

Having a default create-or-update would enable us to use gh more ways (including scripting!) and increase productivity.

This would make the command a little bit more idempotent, as it will ensure that a PR is active and updated at the end.

mislav · 2022-06-13T15:17:23Z

mislav
Jun 13, 2022

Hi, thanks for the suggestion!

Currently, running gh pr create on a branch that already has a PR will error out with a descriptive message:

$ gh pr create
a pull request for branch "<head>" into branch "<base>" already exists:
https://github.com/OWNER/REPO/pull/NUMBER

I believe that this is enough to give you a hint that a PR already exists and that, in most cases, you can just do a git push to update the associated PR.

I'm not sure if gh pr create should effectively do an "upsert" since that behavior could be surprising.

0 replies

kov · 2022-10-28T11:15:47Z

kov
Oct 28, 2022

How about a flag? I have an action that creates a PR automatically from an issue, and the branch is named after the issue. I imagine this is a very common use case, so not having to write the code to check that the PR exists and conditionally creating it would be good to have.

3 replies

kov Oct 28, 2022

To make this a bit more concrete, this is what I ended up with in my action. Not in love with it:

gh pr edit ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }} -b '${{ env.PR_BODY }}' -t '${{ env.PR_TITLE }}' && gh pr reopen ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }} || gh pr create --fill -B main -H ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }}

kov/iocost-benchmarks@45abc4e

mislav Oct 28, 2022

@kov Thanks for sharing your workaround. The code looks simple enough and good to me. I still believe such approach belongs in your own action rather than gh core.

whitgroves Nov 3, 2023

@kov thanks for sharing.

For the next person searching, here's a slightly shorter variant if you don't care about the PR text:
gh pr view ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }} && gh pr reopen ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }} || gh pr create --fill -B main -H ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }}

juniobiel · 2024-01-25T19:10:24Z

juniobiel
Jan 25, 2024

Hey guys.
I was using an Github Action to make PR, but the action that I was using is archived now.
So, the maintainer of the repo Pull-request Action, put on README an instruction that can solve this question.
So, I put this at my actions.

      # Create pull request
      - name: pull-request
        run: |
          gh pr create -B develop --title "Merge ${{ github.ref_name }} into develop" --body 'Created by Github action' || gh pr edit -B develop --title "Merge ${{ github.ref_name }} into develop" --body 'Created by Github action'
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GIT_TOKEN }}

And It's works.

0 replies

freesh · 2024-04-12T19:44:51Z

freesh
Apr 12, 2024

I have to create multible prs. But these Workarounds just working with one pr. I have feature1 -> main, feature1 -> staging and feature1 -> develop.

I think a flag might be the cleaner solution. A flag that overwrites the existing pr instead sending an error.

0 replies

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