Setup github action to enforce branch naming conventions

[dheadrick1618]

Desc: Setup a github action (yaml script) to fail a PR with main if the branch is not named in the standard accepted convention.

Acceptance Criteria:

• Fails any PR request if the branch is not named properly
• Branches must have acceptable name format AND vocabulary or the PR 'test' will fail

[ijoffe]

Thanks for making an issue of this, I meant to earlier.

As an update, I've watched some guides/tutorials and made some notes but haven't started building this action.

Just to confirm, what is the exact branch naming convention? In terms of format (min/max length, pattern, etc) and vocabulary

[dheadrick1618]

Thanks for the update. For now I have put the naming conventions along with other standards we should follow (open to modification) front and center on the albertasat github page. We should probably create a seperate repo for rule for contributing later.

[ijoffe]

Took me a lot longer than I thought, but here is the yaml file with bash script that seems to work for enforcing our branch naming convention on my own private test repo:

# This GitHub Action rejects all those branches whose name does not follow the prescribed format
# Written by Isaac Joffe

name: Branch Naming Convention Enforcer

on:
  pull_request:
    types:
      - opened    # run as soon as a prospective pr is opened

jobs:
  enforce_branch_naming_convention:
    permissions: write-all    # to ensure it has permissions to close a pr
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2    # access state of pr

      - name: Close Pull Request
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          # fetch the branch name and submitter username
          branch_name=${{ github.event.pull_request.head.ref }}
          branch_username=${{ github.event.pull_request.user.login }}
          # construct regex pattern for the naming convention
          pattern="^${branch_username}/(hotfix|bugfix|experimental|feature)/[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+$"

          if ! [[ $branch_name =~ $pattern ]]; then
            echo "Branch name: $branch_name"
            echo "PR submitted by: $branch_username"
            echo "Branch naming convention is <author_name>/<branch_type>/<branch_description>, where <branch_type> is one of {hotfix,bugfix,experimental,feature}"
            echo "Branch name does not follow convention, automatically closing pull request..."
            gh pr close ${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}
          else
            echo "Branch name follows convention, no action required"
          fi

How should I go about integrating this with the AlbertaSat repo (I'm assuming just the ex3_simulated_subsystems first)?

How do you want me to test it thoroughly first? It's performed as expected on the few test cases I used and it has very simple logic but it's good to get into a testing workflow

[dheadrick1618]

Apologies for the delayed response.

I have used the ACT tool in the past to verify yaml github actions scripts locally in the past, to ensure they are behaving as expected without having a bunch of commits to a repo to test. See here: https://github.com/nektos/act

I think making a PR with a branch that just includes the yaml file in a .github/workflows/ directory would be the cleanest way to integrate it into each of our repos.

[cbebe]

Hello, just dropping my .02.

I think simply having a Git pre-commit hook should be enough for enforcing this, they're all run by Git bash so it would also work on Windows.

https://itnext.io/using-git-hooks-to-enforce-branch-naming-policy-ffd81fa01e5e

Yes, someone can simply override it but... why