Using GitHub merge queues

The merge queue feature for pull requests is in public beta and subject to change.

Merge queues are a feature of GitHub to improve development velocity on busy branches. They can increase the rate at which pull requests are merged into a branch while ensuring all the required branch protection checks pass. Merge queues preserve the order of pull requests to merge, remove redundant builds, and reduce flaky merges.

Before you start

Familiarize yourself with managing a merge queue in GitHub.

Enable a merge queue for a pipeline

The merge queue creates temporary branches with a special prefix to validate pull request changes. You need to update the pipeline configuration to match branches with the special prefix. To avoid these temporary branches triggering multiple builds on the same pipeline for the same commit, we recommend enabling the option to skip builds on existing commits.

To enable a merge queue for a pipeline:

From your Buildkite dashboard, select your pipeline.
Select Pipeline Settings > GitHub.
In the Branch Limiting section, add a filter for the following pattern:
```
gh-readonly-queue/{base_branch}/*
```
In the GitHub Settings section, select the Skip builds with existing commits checkbox.

That's it! Your pipeline supports merge queues in GitHub. 🎉