Add PR links to the issue about bedevere HOT 5 CLOSED

I created this issue exactly because that feature seems to be kind of useless for our use case. As far as I understand:

• using special keywords links the issue and PR, but also implies that once the PR is merged the issue will be closed. Since an issue might require multiple PRs (e.g. backports), we don't usually want to do that;
• manually adding an issue to the "Development" section of a PR has the same effect as using the special keywords: i.e. it links the issue and closes it once the PR is merged.
• I'm not sure if adding a PR to the "Development" section of an issue is also the same, but I think it is.

In other words, currently linking and closing are coupled. We want the linking but not the closing, so we can't use the feature unless GitHub decouples them. Maybe there's already a way to do it that I'm not aware of?

from bedevere.

I'm not sure if adding a PR to the "Development" section of an issue is also the same, but I think it is.

I can confirm, I just tried to add a PR to an issue and:

and

In the PR I see:

and

from bedevere.

GitHub does now offer actual links between issues and PRs (see the "Development" section in the right sidebar of this or other issues). However, I have yet to figure out how it's actually supposed to work; the dropdown menu frequently fails to offer me anything approaching relevant, and the magic linking words to include in a message body really are quite magical. If we could that linking working reliably (possibly with help from Sir Bedevere), we could hopefully move away from having to have Bedevere edit any messages. There may be some useful documentation on this somewhere, but I have failed to find it after not looking at all :)

from bedevere.

Additionally, somewhat orthogonal, but PRs can't close other PRs, which is often useful as far as the closing aspect is concerned.

As a sidenote, these cannot be added/changed/removed by triagers unless/until python/core-workflow#460 is resolved.

I'm not sure if adding a PR to the "Development" section of an issue is also the same, but I think it is.

Yes.

from bedevere.

Ah. I had not previously realized how closely coupled they had "linking" and "closing", and some testing shows that there isn't really any way around it :(

On the other hand, links can be made to closed issues, and issues can be reopened; it might not be a bad thing to use the GH linking as is. I for one am not great at always remembering to close an issue after merging its PRs.

from bedevere.