depends-on-action

GitHub action to install dependent Pull Requests and configure them to be used by later steps.

Overview

This action allows you to install Pull Request dependencies when the workflow action is triggered.

You need this action if your project is split into multiple repositories, and you can have Pull Requests that must be tested together. It happens often when you have libraries or micro-services in different repositories, and you need to test changes with the programs that use them. Even if you depend on third-party repositories that are not yours, you can use this action to test your Pull Requests with the third-party Pull Requests.

How does it work? This GitHub action extracts all the Pull Requests that are declared in the description of the main Pull Request with the Depends-On: <PR url> syntax. You can have multiple dependencies in the description of the main Pull Request by adding multiple Depends-On: lines. For example, if you depend on a Pull Request in the org/library repository, you can add the following line in the description of your Pull Request:

Change to use the new library function

Depends-On: https://github.com/org/library/pull/123

If you need to specify a sub-directory for a particular Pull Request, use the following syntax:

Depends-On: <PR url>?subdir=<subdir path>

This GitHub action then injects the needed changes in the code to use the other Pull Requests.

Go lang

For a Go lang change, the action adds replace directives for the dependencies inside the go.mod file. This action needs to be placed after installing the Go lang toolchain.

Python

The action replaces entries in requirements.txt for a Python change with a -e <local change> or the equivalent for pyproject.toml.

Javascript

The action replaces entries in package.json for Javascript change with file:<local change>.

Container

The action auto-detects if a container is present and injects the changes in a compatible way if this is the case.

Enabling the action

Sample Configuration

Defining Github Actions requires creating a directory .github/workflows inside your repository. Inside this directory, you create files processed when various events occur.

The simplest example of using this action would be to create the file .github/workflows/pull_request.yml with the following contents:

---
name: Pull Request
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened]
jobs:
  validate-tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      # install the toolchain for your language

      - name: Extract dependent Pull Requests
        uses: depends-on/depends-on-action@0.11.0
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

      # <your usual actions here>

  check-all-dependencies-are-merged:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Check all dependent Pull Requests are merged
        uses: depends-on/depends-on-action@0.11.0
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          check-unmerged-pr: true
...

You need two pipelines: one to do your regular builds and tests and the second to block until the dependent PR are merged.

Details

• stage 1: javascript program to extract the dependency information from the main change.
• stage 2: depends_on_stage2 python program to extract the dependent pull requests
• stage 3: depends_on_stage3 python program to inject the dependencies into the main PR according to the detected programming languages.

When the action is called with the check-unmerged-pr: true setting, stages 1 and 2 are used but not stage 3. Stage 2, in this case, is not extracting the dependent PR on disk but just checking the merge status of all the dependent PR.

Usage outside of a GitHub action

If you want to use the same dependency management in other CI pipelines or in a local test, you can install the python package:

$ pip install depends-on

and use the depends_on_stage1 script as an entry point taking a json file with the data from your Pull Request:

$ cd <workspace>
$ export GITHUB_LOGIN=<your token>
$ depends_on_stage1 https://github.com/depends-on/pyprog/pulls/2

Roadmap

• stage 1: extract public PR
• stage 3: go support
• stage 2: prevent merging if a dependent PR isn't merged
• stage 3: python support
• stage 3: python poetry support
• stage 3: python subdir support
• stage 3: Container support
• stage 3: javascript support
• python package on pypi
• Non GitHub action usage
• stage 2: gerrit support
• stage 3: custom injection
• stage 3: Github action support
• stage 2: extract private PR
• stage 3: ansible support
• stage 3: rust support