[Feature Request] Prevent issues from being closed by merging linked PRs

[akshaymankar]

I really like how the linked PRs in an issue are listed nicely on the project board as well as in the right side of the issue. It really makes discovering PRs from issues easy.

In my current project, we don’t close issues until they reach production. Also, often we have multiple PRs which fix an issues (in multiple repositories). In such cases I do not want the issue to be autmatically closed, currently I just re-open them. This is not ideal because I could forget to re-open the issue and also this workflow causes a lot of notification noise in my team.

It would be nice if this could somehow be configured, or if there was another keyword (instaed of fixes, closes, etc.) to signify that a PR only partially fixes an issue and the issue and the issue must not be closed auotmatically even after the PR is merged.

[AndreaGriffiths11]

Hi @akshaymankar,

Thanks for this feedback! We’re always working to improve GitHub, and we consider every suggestion we receive. I’ve located an existing “feature request” for disabling the auto-close issues feature and added your voice to it.

Though I can’t guarantee anything or share a timeline for this, I can tell you that it’s been shared with the appropriate teams for consideration.

[marc-hb]

Yup, but all projects do this differently.

... exactly why forcing all projects to auto-close is so bad. It must be a choice.

None of us are in a position to say how easy that is

While it's obviously hard to tell the actual complexity considering it's all closed-source, only a boolean is being requested in terms of user-visible effects. It would be very surprising and disappointing if that required very complex changes and a huge development effort.

there's like 200 people that +1ed out of your user base of millions.

(it's close to 350 now)

Upvoting is not "natural", I've seen issues with more "me too" comments that upvotes. It also requires caring enough to look for an existing issue and being skilled and persistent enough to find it; that's a pretty high bar.

The more interesting metric is to compare with how many votes other issues got.

[bitdivine]

However, I have located the issue and requested an update.

@AndreaGriffiths11 Thank you. Was any update provided?

[caguilar3]

Me and my team really needs this <3 <3

[ChristianTellefsen]

I need the option to not have issues auto-close when a single linked PR is closed.

[JaKoutny]

@AndreaGriffiths11 Sorry to ping you, but you promised us prompt information more than six months ago. It would be nice to at least know that someone is dealing with this (or not).

[GonzaloCalandria]

Was this solved? I’ve the same problem and I would like to know if this feature request was applied or where can I see this feature request.

[rkrishna-gembrill]

I really expect this feature as it is one primary use case where developer fix has to be verified by QA

[Lyokolux]

Indeed

[marc-hb]

QA what? /s

[ahmed2m]

This should be made with another keyword like for instance ‘Linked to #123’

[kingthorin]

You can link issues without using an auto-close keyword. Just use org/repo#issue_number Ex: OWASP/OWASP-VWAD#1

I guess technically you won’t see them in that little “Linked issues” area in the PRs but you’ll still see the reference in the PR message and in the Issue history/log.

[3dfoster]

Hi @AndreaGriffiths11,

Can you provide a link to the existing feature request?

Thanks.

[marc-hb]

Or at least a reference number.

[bitdivine]

Not using a github keyword such as fix is not a viable option if the commit text format is already specified and well established. An option to disable auto-closing would be preferable.

[hipersayanX]

Agree, issues should never be closed before a release, since the issue still exist in the latest release, and it can take a long time before a new release with the fix applied is made.

[amnonkhen]

Has there been any progress on this issue?
Can someone please update the feature request link or status?
Thanks.

[JSoet]

@AndreaGriffiths11
You mentioned you located an existing feature request, do you have a link to that feature request so we can track the status and add our voices as well? Neither I or the other members who’ve replied here have found it.

[alacret]

any news here?

I really like how Kanban shows the linked PRs. But we can use this as it closes the issue

[didac-adria]

Hello!

We have kind of similar issue. In our case it’s ok for issues to be closed when there is ONLY one PR. However, when having multiple linked PR’s, we expect the issue to be closed when the last open PR is merged.

Thanks github team for your effort on continuous improvement!

[demisx]

We need an ability to auto-close most issues and then not to auto-close others. So, a separate keyword similar to "Linked #<issue_number>" or "Related #<issue_number>" will be preferred.

[dariusonsched]

Hello @AndreaGriffiths11,

The community at large both here on this thread and throughout GitHub would substantially benefit from this feature. Would you please share a link to the feature request you speak of for disabling auto-close issues so we can add our voices to it?

GitHub needs to take this issue seriously. I have already had to move several projects to Azure DevOps as this behavior is not enterprise-worthy. Closing an issue when a correlated Pull Request is merged into the default (typically integration/develop branch) is an incorrect workflow (for most projects). An issue is not closed until it has been tested and slated for deployment (or even deployed) into production or cut into a release.

Thank you,
Darius

[ZachCMP]

Hey @AndreaGriffiths11,

Can you please provide a link to the feature request and/or and update on this issue? As with others on this thread, this behavior is problematic for my company’s workflow also and some ability to control it would be really helpful.

Thanks,

Zach

[lidiaparrilla]

I doubt this is going anywhere. It is a discussion marked as Answered by @AndreaGriffiths11. I believe we should find the related “feature request”, that she was mentioning, and follow-up there.

[marcelo-michels]

@AndreaGriffiths11 any update?

[jonas-gomes-vs]

@AndreaGriffiths11 I would really appreciate if this feature would be released.

[jamesicon]

We would really like this feature as we use github boards as our kanban system and it would be helpful to show the linked PR without it closing the issue when merged as most issues can take several PR's to fully fix and we don't consider something done until its in production which merging only goes to a staging env

[giswqs]

It has been more that three years since this feature request submission. Disappointing to see that to this date this feature still has not been implemented.

[sax555]

we are also encountering the same issue.... is there any workaround available?

[kingthorin]

Reference them without one of the closing key words.

[bitdivine]

That is a workaround but no solution. This needs to be fixed.

[Balros]

+1

[k-taiga]

I really need this feature. Please make this happen 🙏

[lidiaparrilla]

Guys, I don't think they will be reading a closed discussion. I just opened a new one in hope for attention from the GitHub team: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/66741. Go give it some support!

[KateRezentes]

We really need this at my work too.

[yash10019coder]

We really need this this is crucial.

[ErichRonis]

file:///I:/setup.exe

[vijayrana-99]

Any update on this feature request?

[lidiaparrilla]

This feature request is marked as solved by a moderator. I suggest you support this new open one to gather more attention from the dev team: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/66741#discussioncomment-8601663

[ryu1]

+1

[dvega-flexion]

Not having this option may have discouraged my team from creating tasks altogether, seems like this could cause a proliferation of untracked branches.