Auto Approve GitHub Action

Name: hmarr/auto-approve-action

Automatically approve GitHub pull requests. The GITHUB_TOKEN secret must be provided as the github-token input for the action to work.

Important: use v2.0.0 or later, as v1 was designed for the initial GitHub Actions beta, and no longer works.

Usage instructions

Create a workflow file (e.g. .github/workflows/auto-approve.yml) that contains a step that uses: hmarr/auto-approve-action@v2. Here's an example workflow file:

name: Auto approve
on: pull_request_target

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: hmarr/auto-approve-action@v2
      with:
        github-token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"

Combine with an if clause to only auto-approve certain users. For example, to auto-approve Dependabot pull requests, use:

name: Auto approve

on:
  pull_request_target

jobs:
  auto-approve:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: hmarr/auto-approve-action@v2
      if: github.actor == 'dependabot[bot]' || github.actor == 'dependabot-preview[bot]'
      with:
        github-token: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"

Why?

GitHub lets you prevent merges of unapproved pull requests. However, it's occasionally useful to selectively circumvent this restriction - for instance, some people want Dependabot's automated pull requests to not require approval.

Code owners

If you're using a CODEOWNERS file, you'll need to give this action a personal access token for a user listed as a code owner. Rather than using a real user's personal access token, you're probably better off creating a dedicated bot user, and adding it to a team which you assign as the code owner. That way you can restrict the bot user's permissions as much as possible, and your workflow won't break when people leave the team.

Development and release process

Each major version corresponds to a branch (e.g. v1, v2). The latest major version (v2 at the time of writing) is the repository's default branch. Releases are tagged with semver-style version numbers (e.g. v1.2.3).