Feature request: choose source branch

[pablo-de-andres]

I personally find the possibility to choose the source branch quite important. I know that rules can be added based on the labels, but that also requires the source branch name (e.g. dev) to stay the same, since it will be hardcoded in the config file.

It would be nice to be able to do something like /cib source-branch.

[robvanderleek]

Hi @pablo-de-andres

Thanks for your feedback 😄

In another issue we've discussed this option too.
Do you want to select an arbitrary branch or another issue-branch (as discussed in #155)?
Can you tell me a bit about your use-case for this feature?

[pablo-de-andres]

My bad, I checked the opened issues for something similar, didn't consider the closed ones. 😅

I would choose an arbitrary branch. Like you mentioned, I also very rarely branch from issue branches.

My workflow is:

• master contains the stable releases.
• Every time I start working on a new release, I create a dev branch.
  I'm considering naming it dev, but for now each one is named with the release version number (e.g. v3.2.0-dev).
• I branch from the dev branch with the issues assigned to that new milestone/release.

[robvanderleek]

Thanks for explaining your use-case @pablo-de-andres

A way to currently support this branching scheme would be to create a release label, say v3.2.0, and then configure this app to take v3.2.0-dev as the source branch for issues with this label. Example configuration YAML:

branches:
  - label: v3.2.0
    name: v3.2.0-dev

This currently only works with labels, not milestones, but that would not be very difficult to implement.

I'm a bit hesitant to add support for arbitrary branch names in the ChatOps interface since typing /cib v.3.2.0-dev in the issue conversation seems error-prone to me. Also, the arguments after /cib can currently be configured to override the branch name so I'm not sure how to support both use-cases with the ChatOps interface.

[pablo-de-andres]

Ok, thank you!

That would require to also change the configuration file for every release, though...

[robvanderleek]

Yeah, I admit that is cumbersome.

Do you mind if I add your issue to the Features under Consideration list?
I'm not sure at the moment how/if the ChatOps interface should be extended.

Admittedly there is not a lot of progress on issues that end up on that list, but if more people request this feature I can come back to it.

[pablo-de-andres]

Sure, no worries.

And thanks a lot for the consideration and support! 😃