TFS - require tests to complete PR - tfs

Our bugfix process (as - I guess - most of them) requires doing code review and manual verification by tester before completing pull request. We use TFS with git as VCS.
Is there a way to disallow completing PR before a manual tester approves the fix?
The only solution that comes to my mind would be by adding tester as required reviewer to PR, but this seems more like workaround rather than solution.

Related

How can I restore a work-in-progress PR in Bitbucket Cloud?

I spent a lot of time describing my changes in a PR in Atlassian Bitbucket online, but my PC blue-screened before I could create the PR. Is there any way I can recover the description? If not through Bitbucket, perhaps through Google Chrome?
I tried looking in the repo's list of existing (created) PRs. I also tried creating a new PR from scratch with the same settings, hoping the description that I'd spent so much time on would automatically populate (Atlassian does that sometimes), but no luck.
Sadly, the answer is probably not.
One major downside of BitBucket's Pull Request feature (compared to competitors like GitHub) is that it lacks a Draft PR capability to explicitly mark a PR as not yet ready for review. The description information in the Create PR interface for BitBucket Cloud only exists in your browser until you click "Create Pull Request" for the first time. You CAN continue to edit the description after creating the PR, but some developers prefer not to "edit in public".
As an added complication you might not yet have seen, even without a browser crash you can get into trouble in the Create PR interface if the source branch changes. I.e. pushing additional commits to a source branch while you're editing the description in the Create PR interface for that branch gives you a popup with two options, BOTH of which result in the loss of your current description text.
Other alternatives:
Craft your description text in a private editor (possibly one with markdown capabilities) and save to your local disk, then paste into the BitBucket Create PR description box as the last step. This is probably the most reliable solution.
Adopt a naming convention with your repo reviewers for PRs. For example in our team, PR's with a Title prefixed by "WIP:" are understood as work-in-progress that is not yet ready for review.

How can I stop a merge in bitbucket if a build fails?

In Bitbucket, After a developers code is PR'd and ready to be merged, I want a build to be made when the developer requests to merge, and for the merge to fail if the build fails. I know I can trigger a build when a pull request is made, and then use the merge checks feature, but the developers code can change during the PR which could introduce build breaking bugs. Builds take quite a while too, so I don't want it to happen every time a developer updates their code.
Is there any solution to this? Perhaps via the Build Pipelines feature?

Github PR Checks Without Disallowing Pushing

Please read carefully as I believe my use case is unique and I have tried searching a lot on how to do this, but I am still unsure.
Generally, I am trying to set up a repo for a group of developers to work on and have it contain CI checks and require reviewers. However, I have run into some issues with how Github enforces branch protection. On top of that, I cannot use Actions as we are using a self-hosted Enterprise Github through an organization.
My desires:
Use Jenkins (which is already set up and building) builds as checks for PRs. If the checks don't pass, you cannot click merge on the PR.
Allow pushing to a branch that I have a PR up for so the author can push changes based on PR comments.
Require two approvals from maintainers. You cannot click merge without these.
It seems I could protect a master branch for example. However, I would like to enforce the PR checks whenever a person chooses to make a PR. For example, from one dev branch into another dev branch.
Use case:
An author sets up a PR for merging a branch some-work into dev. Jenkins builds the HEAD of the branch some-work to evaluate the checks. I would like to enforce this PR to have two approvals from maintainers. So, those reviewers make some comments and request some changes. The author makes those changes and pushes a new commit to the some-work branch. Jenkins runs on the new HEAD to reevaluate the checks. Then, if-and-only-if the two reviewers approve and the checks pass can the merge button be clicked.
What I have tried:
Using Github branch protections: the required approvals and the required status checks. However, this prevents any pushing or force pushing to the branch being developed on. I could just apply these protections to master, but I also want these checks part of any PR (even dev2->dev1, for example).
Github actions, but these are not available in the self-hosted enterprise Github I have to use.
What I understand:
I understand that I can protect master, for example, in this manner with the native Github branch protection. However, if I want master to be something that always works, it is understandable that developers would break up a feature into multiple branches. They would also want their follow developers to review it when merging it from their branch to an intermediate (non-master) branch. Then the actual branch being merged into master consists of code written by many developers.
Thank you all in advance for your time and help. :)
Using Github branch protections: the required approvals and the required status checks.
However, this prevents any pushing or force pushing to the branch being developed on
But... that issue (not being able to push a protected branch) could be part of a possible solution.
I would make jenkins create/reset a PR branch based on a push on a topic branch (like some-work-pr, based on some-work)
some-work is not protected, and can receive commits at any time
some-work-pr is created by Jenkins protected, and cannot be modified: compilation/test/review/approval happens here.
PR would only be done from xxx-pr branches (protected PR branches created/managed by Jenkins), while other topic branches continue to evolve.
You can only enforce these policies with branch protections, so if you want to enable required CI checks before merging a PR for all branches, then you need to protect all branches (e.g., with the pattern **). In that case, you'll need to have developers use a forking model for your repositories so that they can push code to their forks and then merge in the changes via pull requests only.
Note that if you adopt an approach where projects are implemented as a set of small, incremental changes that are merged frequently and use feature flags to control whether the code is enabled, then as a practical matter developers will only merge into the main branch and you can get away with only protecting the main branch.

Enforce merge branch approval for TFS

i work in a SQL Development Environment.
We have three branches namely DEV, TEST and LIVE.
Whenever a developer did something and wants to deploy on Test System i need a mechanism within TFS that enforces him to do a code review.
I know this can be done by enforcing a code review check-in policy.
But I don't want to trigger a code review with every check-in but more whenever somebody merges to TEST branch.
Think of it more as an approval enforcement. I want that TFS is requesting a code reviewe whenever somebody branches into a different branch. The best scenario is that i can specify the branches that trigger this behaviour.
Code Review Check-in policy can specify a path to apply this policy to, so you can only apply this policy to your TEST branch:
By the way, if you use Git team project in TFS 2017 or VSTS, you can enable branch policies to require code reviews for a branch. More information, check: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/git/branch-policies

Git Pull Request-like process in Team Foundation Version Control

Suppose I have a team project with two branches: "main" and "dev" (fictional names).
As things are now, new code is merged into "main" without any code review. Also, anyone can check-in directly to it. We would like to change that.
I would really like to have something like Git's pull request functionality. I know we can use permissions to keep everyone from making check-ins at the main branch. We can also use permissions to make sure that only a reviewer can merge into the main branch.
But how can we review the difference between both branches before doing a merge?
I found out that the Code Review feature of TFS 2013 only works if you have the Premium edition of Visual Studio. Not all of the devs here have it, and we cannot install other editions for them, nor get VS2015 or later versions.
You can add a custom check in policy for code review before checking in. There is an existing Code Review Checkin Policy can be downloaded from website below, this policy allows you to enforce Code Reviews at checkin time.:
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/c476b708-77a8-4065-b9d0-919ab688f078

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