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Allow only specific people or team to approve a PR #23765
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Hi, we have private repos and we are allowing other people to have write access to the repo. We want to be able to restrict though who is allowed to approve a PR based on member or even better a team. We want also to have at least 3 people of the owning team to give approvals before the merge. So, in essence, we want to differentiate between contributing teams and approving teams. I know that in Gitlab this is possible, I assume in Github also but I cannot find this setting anywhere. Code owners are restricted to have at least one of the approvers to be an owner but we want more… Any idea? |
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Replies: 2 comments 10 replies
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Hi @mantzas! Thanks for your question. Through protected branch settings, you can specify a minimum number of reviews from collaborators with write or admin permissions on the repo. You can combine this with a codeowners file to ensure that at least one member of a specific team approves changes for code that they own. However it’s not possible to require that more than one member of the team in the codeowners file approves the change. I hope this helps! |
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Azure DevOps also has a very nice solution to this you can say the PR requires X approvals from Y group of users and Y group can be whatever you want - we defined a group for that purpose. You can also say it requires X from group Y and N from group Z and M approvals overall etc. This is lacking a lot in GitHub and is a pain. |
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@Alex-ley-scrub Aye for some reason I expected this functionality to already be present in GitHub since Azure DevOps often lags behind its competetors - especially considering how long GitHub has been around. |
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Just want to add in that this isn't a good answer. Since nowadays a lot of process control happens through VCS, being able to enforce stakeholder approval is pretty important. |
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We had on ADO similar setup to what @Alex-ley-scrub mentioned. We would like to have a similar feature. |
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+1 to the replies here. It is limiting in our org because we encourage people in non-technical roles (i.e Support, Product Managers) to write small PRs to update copy or even write small features. Restricting their ability to approve of PRs would be very useful, as it means an approval comes with sign off that the technical quality meets our standards. A similar use case would be team members who mostly QA & have write access for copy updates. |
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GitHub does provide features to control code review and approvals based on teams and individuals. To achieve what you're looking for, you can use branch protection rules combined with code review assignment. Here's a guide:
By configuring these settings, you can ensure that specific teams or individuals are required to review the code, and you can set the number of approvals needed before merging. Keep in mind that GitHub doesn't directly have a concept of "approvers" distinct from code owners, but you can achieve the desired workflow through the settings mentioned above. Profile
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@akashdip2001 : But as I understand it works now, if my code owners mentions 2 groups, let's call them "contributors" and "approvers", and I require X number of approvers on the PR, then GitHub would be fine with X contributors OR X approvers giving their approval on the PR. I want to enforce that both contributors AND approvers give their consent on the PR, and that is not possible as far as I know? So if I require 2 reviewers, I want it to be a contributor and an approver. NOT 2 contributors or 2 approvers. |
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To achieve the requirement where you want both "contributors" and "approvers" to give their consent on a pull request (PR), you can't rely on the basic 'required reviewers' functionality provided by GitHub as it does not differentiate between groups of reviewers. However, there are workarounds to impose such constraints:
Remember, automation solutions like GitHub Actions, bots, or apps will require additional maintenance and oversight but can provide the level of control you're looking for. While the custom automation setup might require initial investment in time and possibly infrastructure (if you don't use existing GitHub Actions or Apps), it is the most reliable way to enforce complex review policies. |
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Hi @mantzas! Thanks for your question.
Through protected branch settings, you can specify a minimum number of reviews from collaborators with write or admin permissions on the repo.
You can combine this with a codeowners file to ensure that at least one member of a specific team approves changes for code that they own. However it’s not possible to require that more than one member of the team in the codeowners file approves the change.
I hope this helps!