bot should ping author when PR has merge conflicts and mark the PR as "awaiting changes"

[iritkatriel]

When a PR has merge conflicts, the author doesn't know unless they check or another person alerts them.

It would be good if the bot could ping them and move the PR to "awaiting changes" state.

[Mariatta]

Let's try doing this as a GH Action instead of in bedevere.

I think this would require checking the PR's "mergeable" status on the "synchronized" or "push" event.

[iritkatriel]

I think a nightly job checking each open PR would be sufficient, and possibly simpler?

[arhadthedev]

I think a nightly job checking each open PR would be sufficient, and possibly simpler?

Probably, the job should skip inactive PRs (that have the last message older than, say, three month). It's vital to prevent piling up everyone's unread notifications with hundreds of dusted patches.

[iritkatriel]

I think a nightly job checking each open PR would be sufficient, and possibly simpler?

Probably, the job should skip inactive PRs (that have the last message older than, say, three month). It's vital to prevent piling up everyone's unread notifications with hundreds of dusted patches.

Dead PRs should be closed.

[arhadthedev]

Dead PRs should be closed.

Ultimately yes. However, it requires a wide discussion first as noted by Brett in python/cpython#21247 (comment). So, to get the useful notifier sooner, we need to add its limited version.

[iritkatriel]

I'm not suggesting to automatically close PR. My point is that if you get pinged a lot about merge conflicts on your open PRs then I think you're probably doing something wrong. How many open PRs should a person have on the go?

[arhadthedev]

My point is that if you get pinged a lot about merge conflicts on your open PRs then I think you're probably doing something wrong.

Ping messages are not private so they're sent to everyone subscribed to python/cpython.

However, if notifications would be emailed from python.org to an address in the first commit of a PR, my concerns are irrelevant.

[terryjreedy]

There are 44 open PRs with Idle in the title. Yes, that is too many. Currently, it would be useless to ping anyone but me, as the assignee. I would only want 1 ping per PR with a conflict. If a PR is marked with a conflict, do not ping again. Ideally, I would like a way to test whether a PR causes conflicts before merging, or even before making a PR, so I could consider which order to do them in.

[iritkatriel]

If a PR is marked with a conflict, do not ping again.

Yes, absolutely agree.

[hugovk]

Duplicate of #96 ("Add a bot to notify people when their PR has a merge conflict")?

[erlend-aasland]

Duplicate of #96 ("Add a bot to notify people when their PR has a merge conflict")?

Yes, it seems like this is a duplicate. Suggesting to close either the old or this issue as a duplicate.

[hauntsaninja]

I'm interested in picking this up. Adding a label seems like a good place to start.

I started a draft in python/bedevere#530. On every push to main, we requery mergeability status for each open PR. Using GraphQL means we can do this in relatively few requests, so we don't need to worry too much about rate limits.

[AA-Turner]

@hauntsaninja did you make any progress? Are we still interested in this idea, or can we close the issue?