Allow only specific people or team to approve a PR

[mantzas]

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?

[ghost]

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!

[OddKMS]

@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.

[dieter-aerit]

Just want to add in that this isn't a good answer.
I want to be able to configure that team(s) A and B need to approve a PR before it can go out.

Since nowadays a lot of process control happens through VCS, being able to enforce stakeholder approval is pretty important.

[pdefreitas]

We had on ADO similar setup to what @Alex-ley-scrub mentioned. We would like to have a similar feature.

[AwolDes]

+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.

[bioche]

Github has added rulesets but weirdly it still doesn't handle this common use case :/

[dieter-aerit]

@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.

[mithunpandey]

The Use case is very clear,
How to enforce that Unless one reviewer each from Multiple Teams mentioned in the CODEOWNERS file for single Pull Request approves it the PR cant be merged.

IT seems like this can not be done by using the Branch Protection settings and CODEOWNERS file

[nathannis]

Internally we have a similar policy (ours is one developer familiar with the source code AND one generic developer) I initially set up our code owners file to have both GitHub teams (@Silo-Team and @Developers) but then eventually realized that if two @Developers but no @Silo-Team members approved the button turned green on GitHub and a developer from @Silo-Team was no longer required to approve prior to merging. We eventually set up our own app to assign the additional @developer and only put @Silo-Team in the github code owners file.

[Shreyas-Jangam]

Enable Branch Protection Rules
Go to your repository on GitHub.
Navigate to Settings > Branches > Branch protection rules.
Click on Add rule and specify the branch you want to protect (e.g., main).
Under Branch protection rules, enable Require pull request reviews before merging.
Enable Require review from Code Owners to ensure only code owners can approve.
2. Define Code Owners
In the root directory of your repository, create a .github/CODEOWNERS file (if it doesn’t exist already).
Specify the paths and the users or teams responsible. For example:
plaintext
Copy code

This makes only the specified users or team members code owners for the repository

• @username1 @username2

Or specify a team

• @org/team-name
  Save and commit the .github/CODEOWNERS file.
  With this setup, only the specified users or teams in the CODEOWNERS file can approve the PRs. This is particularly useful in repositories where approvals are required only from particular team members or domain experts.

[LeoLau94]

Hi，Can I achieve it without a CODEOWNERS file?

[sandy2341]

How can we make it happen that approval from each team
Example approval should be done by team A and team B as well
So min 2 approvals from each team.