How to Squash Using Github Squash and Merge?

[ryanolson-aumni]

What I'm hoping to accomplish is get a queue setup so that:

• PRs get queued
• Once they're ready to merge, they squash before merging
• I want it to include the pull request title and description (as you can configure in Github)

• Once I view the commits, I'd like for the commit to show as a Merge commit (this is desired, but I'm not sure if it's possible)

What's the best way to do this?

I tried:

queue_rules:
  - name: default
    merge_method: merge
    update_method: rebase
    update_bot_account: '{{ author }}'
    queue_conditions:
      - base=main
      - -conflict

pull_request_rules:
  - name: Automatic merge on approval
    conditions:
      - base=main
      - label=automerge
    actions:
      queue:
        name: default

But then I see this on a test PR

How can I solve this? Or is the best option doing a squash merge_method and configure it using templating?

[jd]

Hi @ryanolson-aumni

I'm a bit confused by your request here as you're saying two different things:

Once they're ready to merge, they squash before merging

And then:

Once I view the commits, I'd like for the commit to show as a Merge commit (this is desired, but I'm not sure if it's possible)

This is antinomic. If you merge a pull request via the squash method, then you'll get a single commit on top of the target branch.
If you want a merge commit, then you cannot squash before, and you'll need to merge the pull request via the merge method.

Does that help?

My next question would be: why would you prefer a merge commit over a squash?

[ryanolson-aumni]

That helps a lot. Thank you.

My next question would be: why would you prefer a merge commit over a squash?

Then tools like git log --merges can pick up merge commits vs others. It's not too big of a deal.

[jd]

Understood. If you always squash your PR and refer the PR number in that title for example, it's pretty easy to know which commits belongs to which PR, making it easy to find where the commit comes from — I imagine this is your use case.