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Linter breaking change: restricting automatic merge

· 2 min read
Bart Piotrowski
Bart Piotrowski
Flathub Fixer

Starting next week, June 17th, the linter will no longer allow enabling automatic merge for pull requests created by flatpak-external-data-checker, unless the app uses an extra-data source or has been added to the exceptions list.

The verified apps utilizing automerge-flathubbot-prs before May 28th have been grandfathered and no explicit action is required from the maintainers. If your app does not meet these criteria, you can still request an exception by creating a pull request to the flatpak-builder-lint repository. Exception requests will be judged on a case-by-case basis on providing valid reasons.

The automerge-flathubbot-prs feature has been introduced back in 2019 to reduce maintenance overhead of applications dependent on non-redistributable data. If an extra-data source used by the app disappears because of an update, the automation would ensure that it is still possible to install the app, without requiring manual intervention from the maintainers.

Over time, the feature has started to be misused as a general purpose automation for publishing updates without proper testing. This has led to a number of issues where apps became broken overnight, which could have been easily prevented if the update was tested before merging.