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Auto-merge when CI is green

The “merge approved PRs” pattern in the CI/CD guide only checks whether a pull request (PR) has participants[].approved set — it ignores the actual CI status. This recipe adds the missing piece: poll bb pr checks until every status is SUCCESSFUL, then merge.

What “all-green” means

Section titled “What “all-green” means”

bb pr checks <id> --json returns this envelope — each entry in statuses also carries refname, createdOn and uuid, trimmed here:

{
  "pullRequestId": 42,
  "workspace": "myworkspace",
  "repoSlug": "myrepo",
  "summary": {
    "successful": 3,
    "failed": 0,
    "pending": 0
  },
  "statuses": [
    {
      "key": "build",
      "name": "Build & Test",
      "state": "SUCCESSFUL",
      "description": "Build #1234 succeeded",
      "url": "https://ci.example.com/build/1234",
      "updatedOn": "2025-01-01T12:00:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

Possible state values: SUCCESSFUL, FAILED, INPROGRESS, STOPPED.

A PR is all-green when at least one check exists and every status is SUCCESSFUL. Treat zero checks as “not ready”.

summary counts only three of those states: successful for SUCCESSFUL, failed for FAILED, pending for INPROGRESS. Anything else — STOPPED, or any state Bitbucket adds later — is counted in none of them, so summary.successful + failed + pending can be less than statuses | length. Gate on successful == total, never on failed == 0 and pending == 0.

jq filter for all-green

Section titled “jq filter for all-green”
Terminal window
# Returns "true" only if ≥1 check exists and every state is SUCCESSFUL
bb pr checks 42 --json --jq '
  (.statuses | length) > 0
  and (.statuses | all(.state == "SUCCESSFUL"))
'

If you want to also gate on approval:

Terminal window
bb pr view 42 --json --jq '
  [.participants[] | select(.approved == true)] | length > 0
'

Recipe: poll-then-merge

Section titled “Recipe: poll-then-merge”

Drop this into a scheduled CI job or run locally. It polls a single PR until checks settle, then merges.

#!/bin/bash
# auto-merge-on-green.sh - Wait for CI to pass, then merge.
set -euo pipefail


WORKSPACE="${WORKSPACE:-myworkspace}"
REPO="${REPO:-myrepo}"
PR_ID="${1:?Usage: $0 <pr-id>}"
TIMEOUT_SECONDS="${TIMEOUT_SECONDS:-1800}"   # 30 minutes
POLL_INTERVAL="${POLL_INTERVAL:-30}"


deadline=$(( $(date +%s) + TIMEOUT_SECONDS ))


while true; do
  if [ "$(date +%s)" -gt "$deadline" ]; then
    echo "Timed out waiting for PR #$PR_ID checks" >&2
    exit 1
  fi


  checks_json=$(bb pr checks "$PR_ID" -w "$WORKSPACE" -r "$REPO" --json)


  failed=$(echo "$checks_json" | jq '.summary.failed')
  successful=$(echo "$checks_json" | jq '.summary.successful')
  pending=$(echo "$checks_json" | jq '.summary.pending')
  total=$(echo "$checks_json" | jq '.statuses | length')


  if [ "$failed" -gt 0 ]; then
    echo "PR #$PR_ID has $failed failed check(s); aborting." >&2
    exit 1
  fi


  # successful == total, not "no failures and nothing pending": a STOPPED
  # check lands in none of the summary buckets, so the looser test would
  # merge a PR whose only build was cancelled. A STOPPED check keeps this
  # loop polling until TIMEOUT_SECONDS, which then exits 1.
  if [ "$total" -gt 0 ] && [ "$successful" -eq "$total" ]; then
    echo "All $total checks passed for PR #$PR_ID — merging."
    break
  fi


  echo "PR #$PR_ID: $successful/$total passed, $pending pending — sleeping ${POLL_INTERVAL}s"
  sleep "$POLL_INTERVAL"
done


bb pr merge "$PR_ID" \
  -w "$WORKSPACE" -r "$REPO" \
  --strategy squash --close-source-branch

Usage

Section titled “Usage”
Terminal window
WORKSPACE=myworkspace REPO=myrepo ./auto-merge-on-green.sh 42

Recipe: scan all open PRs

Section titled “Recipe: scan all open PRs”

Run this on a schedule (cron, GitHub Actions cron trigger, Bitbucket Pipelines schedule). It merges every approved PR whose checks are all green and skips the rest silently.

--all is load-bearing. bb pr list defaults to --limit 25, and the Use --limit <n> or --all to see more. hint is printed with table output only — under --json you get 25 rows and no warning, so older approved PRs would never be merged.

#!/bin/bash
# auto-merge-scan.sh - Merge every approved, all-green PR.
set -euo pipefail


WORKSPACE="${WORKSPACE:-myworkspace}"
REPO="${REPO:-myrepo}"


open_prs=$(bb pr list -w "$WORKSPACE" -r "$REPO" --all --json --jq '.pullRequests[].id')


for pr_id in $open_prs; do
  approved=$(bb pr view "$pr_id" -w "$WORKSPACE" -r "$REPO" --json --jq '
    [.participants[] | select(.approved == true)] | length > 0
  ')
  [ "$approved" = "true" ] || { echo "PR #$pr_id: not approved"; continue; }


  green=$(bb pr checks "$pr_id" -w "$WORKSPACE" -r "$REPO" --json --jq '
    (.statuses | length) > 0
    and (.statuses | all(.state == "SUCCESSFUL"))
  ')
  [ "$green" = "true" ] || { echo "PR #$pr_id: checks not green"; continue; }


  echo "Merging PR #$pr_id"
  if ! bb pr merge "$pr_id" -w "$WORKSPACE" -r "$REPO" \
        --strategy squash --close-source-branch; then
    echo "PR #$pr_id: merge failed (conflicts or branch policy)" >&2
  fi


  sleep 2   # gentle pacing across many PRs
done
Section titled “Related”