What exactly happens when you decline a pull request in Stash?

[Wim Deblauwe]

The Stash documentation on pull requests does not detail in any way what exactly happens when you 'decline' a pull request. If I am added as a reviewer and I have a comment on the pull request, should I decline the pull request as well? Or just add a comment and wait until the pull request is updated again for my comment?

[seb · Accepted solution]

Hi Wim,

Declining a pull request is an indication that the pull request should probably never be merged to the destination branch. You might decline a pull request if: there are serious architectural problems with the incoming changes, there are philosophical conflicts in the changes or the code changes are no longer relevant (or will be incorporated in a few months time, perhaps).

If the pull request requires rework, then we suggest leaving the pull request open until those changes are pushed to the source branch, when the pull request will be updated automatically and show the new changes. You will be notified when changes are made to the pull request.

Of course, you might want to restrict who can merge a pull request given certain conditions. This can be done using branch permissions and/or merge checks. You can even build your own merge checks.

Hope that helps,
Seb

[Gary m]

Can this be added to the Stash documentation please?

[Kenneth Blair]

The problem with this workflow is there's no effective way to say "I'm done reviewing and this is not approved". Users will be notified of each comment you make and have no way of knowing whether or not you've completed your review or were pulled into a meeting halfway through it.

[cofarrell]

Hi Kenneth,

We're definitely aware of that and are looking to improve this experience in a future version. You might be interested in:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/STASH-2999

Cheers,

Charles