🚀 GitHub Action for creating Pull Requests

GitHub Action that will create a pull request from the currently selected branch.

Useful in combination with my other action devops-infra/action-commit-push.

📦 Available on

Dockerized as devopsinfra/action-pull-request. Built from ghcr.io/devops-infra//action-pull-request.

✨ Features

• Creates pull request if triggered from a current branch or any specified by source_branch to a target_branch
• Title and body of a pull request can be specified with title and body
• Can assign assignee, reviewer, one or more label, a milestone or mark it as a draft
• Can replace any old_string inside a pull request template with a new_string. Or put commits' subjects in place of old_string
• When get_diff is true will add list of commits in place of <!-- Diff commits --> and list of modified files in place of <!-- Diff files --> in a pull request template
• When allow_no_diff is set to true will continue execution and create pull request even if both branches have no differences, e.g. having only a merge commit
• Supports both amd64 and arm64 architectures

Badge swag

📖 API Reference

    - name: Run the Action
      uses: devops-infra/action-pull-request@v0.6
      with:
        github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        source_branch: development
        target_branch: master
        title: My pull request
        template: .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
        body: "**Automated pull request**"
        reviewer: octocat
        assignee: octocat
        label: enhancement
        milestone: My milestone
        draft: true
        old_string: "<!-- Add your description here -->"
        new_string: "** Automatic pull request**"
        get_diff: true
        ignore_users: "dependabot"
        allow_no_diff: false

🔧 Input Parameters

Input Variable	Required	Default	Description
github_token	Yes	""	GitHub token ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
source_branch	No	current branch	Name of the source branch
target_branch	No	master	Name of the target branch. Change it if you use main
title	No	subject of the first commit	Pull request title
template	No	""	Template file location
body	No	list of commits	Pull request body
reviewer	No	""	Reviewer's username
assignee	No	""	Assignee's usernames
label	No	""	Labels to apply, comma separated
milestone	No	""	Milestone
draft	No	false	Whether to mark it as a draft
old_string	No	""	Old string for the replacement in the template
new_string	No	""	New string for the replacement in the template. If not specified, but old_string was, it will gather commits subjects
get_diff	No	false	Whether to replace predefined comments with differences between branches - see details below
ignore_users	No	"dependabot"	List of users to ignore, comma separated
allow_no_diff	No	false	Allows to continue on merge commits with no diffs

🔧 Input Parameters

Output	Description
url	Pull request URL
pr_number	Number of GitHub pull request

➿ How get_diff works

In previous versions occurrences of following strings in a template result with replacing them with list of commits and list of modified files (<!-- Diff commits --> and <!-- Diff files -->).

Now this action will expect to have three types of comment blocks. Meaning anything between START and END comment will get replaced. This is especially important when updating pull request with new commits.

• <!-- Diff summary - START --> and <!-- Diff summary - END --> - show first lines of each commit in the pull request
• <!-- Diff commits - START --> and <!-- Diff commits - END --> - show graph of commits in the pull request, with authors' info and time
• <!-- Diff files - START --> and <!-- Diff files - END --> - show list of modified files

If your template uses old comment strings it will try to adjust them in the pull request body to a new standard when pull request is created. It will not modify the template.

CAUTION: Remember to not use default fetch-depth for actions/checkout action. Rather set it to 0 - see example below.

💻 Usage Examples

Red areas show fields that can be dynamically expanded based on commits to the current branch. Blue areas show fields that can be set in action configuration.

📝 Basic Example

Create pull request for non-master branches:

name: Run the Action on each commit
on:
  push:
    branches-ignore: master
jobs:
  action-pull-request:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Create pull request
        uses: devops-infra/action-pull-request@v0.6
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          title: Automatic pull request

🔀 Advanced Example

Use first commit as a title and part of body, add a label based on a branch name, add git differences in the template:

name: Run the Action on each commit
on:
  push:
    branches-ignore: master
jobs:
  action-pull-request:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Run the Action
        if: startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/heads/feature')
        uses: devops-infra/action-pull-request@v0.6
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          title: ${{ github.event.commits[0].message }}
          assignee: ${{ github.actor }}
          label: automatic,feature
          template: .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE/FEATURE.md
          old_string: "**Write your description here**"
          new_string: ${{ github.event.commits[0].message }}
          get_diff: true

🏷️ Version Tags: vX, vX.Y, vX.Y.Z

This action supports three tag levels for flexible versioning:

• vX: Always points to the latest patch of a major version (e.g., v1 → v1.2.3).
  Benefit: Get all latest fixes for a major version automatically.

• vX.Y: Always points to the latest patch of a minor version (e.g., v1.2 → v1.2.3).
  Benefit: Stay on a minor version, always up-to-date with bugfixes.

• vX.Y.Z: Fixed to a specific release (e.g., v1.2.3).
  Benefit: Full reproducibility—never changes.

Use the tag depth that matches your stability needs.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. Refer to the CONTRIBUTING for guidelines.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

💬 Support

If you have any questions or need help, please:

• 📝 Create an issue
• 🌟 Star this repository if you find it useful!