Merge strategies

[AlexAxthelm]

Some of our repos have we don't have consistent merge strategies on our repos, and I don't know if that's important or not

Also consider the merge queue, which is in place on some repos (and I don't really understand how it works or why it's important)

https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/configuring-pull-request-merges/about-merge-methods-on-github

cc @cjyetman

[cjyetman]

The repos I maintain only allow "squash and merge", which I have a very strong preference for.

I think two of the repos I maintain have merge queue enabled. It was mostly an experiment once it became available. I'm not totally convinced with it. I like that when I/we are doing rapid development that we don't have to "update branch" on every open PR as we're merging things, but it also introduces some weirdness, like occasional delays in the PRs merging and occasional odd behavior with Actions running in the queue. Honestly, I'm tempted to turn it off in those repos.

[jdhoffa]

Yeah, my repos are all also set to "squash and merge" by default (and other options removed). Would be happy to align on this (but also happy for this to be maintainer-managed if people have strong preferences).

I tend to prefer not using the "merge queue" for the most part. The "update branch" thing is a bit annoying, but I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to have a bit of friction when we are rapid-fire merging PRs (this is usually when bugs are introduced anyway...)

Also not sure it matters, but "merge queue" cannot be used in conjunction with "wait for successful deployment". I don't know what the latter does/ how useful it is, but just judging by the name it sounds maybe interesting for ensuring e.g. that pkgdown sites build before a PR can merge, which I see potential value in:

[AlexAxthelm]

worst thing in the world to have a bit of friction when we are rapid-fire merging PRs

Isn't the merge queu designed for exactly that situation? (many PRs to busy branches)

[jdhoffa]

What I meant is adding friction that requires someone to manually inspect things. Merge-queue automates pulling and merging of branches (rather than manually updating them when they fall out of sync). I fear things may get missed if we implement this

Although also, hopefully, now that we have maintainers the "rapid fire merging of PRs to main" may be a bit less frequent? Maybe not