Disable "had recent pushes" banner for some branches

[metaturso]

When protecting branches it should be possible to specify a branch to never be treated as a source (compare) side of a Pull Request.

This is a common scenario where develop is merged into master or main, at the end of a change, to trigger specific CD release workflows, and changes are never merged from master into develop.

Declaring the develop branch instead of master as the default branch is useful. GitHub shows the content of this branch on the repository page, and it prevents new Pull Request from accidentally targeting the master branch.

The problem with this approach is this banner that makes it easy to think master needs merging back into develop. The only difference between the two branches is the merge commit generated by the pull request.

Please make it possible to disable this banner for selected branches.

Note
This request differs from #34225, which asks for the banner to be completely disabled. I believe this is a useful banner. Just not for all branches.

[OwensCode]

I vote for this change

[jrett]

I agree with this.
But can we simply not recommend a pull request if there are no actual changes between the branches?
I keep getting this banner, and when I look at the other branch, I get it saying that one or the other is 1 commit behind or ahead of the other, and it suggests I do a pull request. But then at the bottom of the screen, it shows no differences.

Or when I PR and merge into one branch, between the two they still say there's a difference, and when it shows the difference, it's comparing with a previous commit. Am I missing something?

[olafur-palsson]

I had this also, in my case one of them had a merge commit and the other not. It's able to merge but will not do much.

[dgchrt]

This would sort both issues. If staging and production are always behind main anyways, there should be no automatic banner for them.

[SubvertDev]

That would be awesome, kinda annoying when your main branch is develop and you push something to "main"

[karol767]

Yes, I'm interested in Dev Branch Composing.
Ask for your opinion.

[Jorann]

Just ran into this suggestion. I was surprised this is not an option in branch protection rules.

[lukemorton]

Yep same here!

[c-reeder]

Has there been any movement on this? I also think this would be a great feature especially for branches that have automatic processes occurring on them.

[bwees]

I have a GitHub action that updates data in a separate branch and its a pain to see this every time I log in.

[NilsBaumgartner1994]

+1 would like to see that too.

[dontic]

I agree this is a pain for the common "develop" > "staging" > "master" branch workflow where the active branch is the "develop" one. This situation is quite common.

[dgchrt]

No need to go that far with customization. It also happens for the vanilla main -> staging -> production workflow.

[byronbowerman]

This is also unhelpful for orphan branches that shouldn't merge back into the default/main/master/trunk

[bwees]

Yeah I have code that is completely separate from the main branch that does something completely different that I still want in the same repo but not alongside the main code

[bsconnor]

+1 would be great to see

[eduardoabpereira]

+1

[shreyass-ranganatha]

+1

[MolotovCherry]

+1 This is annoying me a bit since I have an automatically managed branch that nobody needs to see any notification about.

[augustelalande]

+1 please

[ym-herby]

+100 this is monumental pain.

[fredrikodenelse]

+1

[lesca]

+1

[Legnatbird]

+1

[voron5096]

+1

[pdm-pcb]

This has my upvote, too. As a solo maintainer... It's distracting clutter for me.

[flavius]

+1

Also consider orphan branches. It makes no sense to show them, even according to your own existing messages. Opening a PR from an orphan branch shows:

[nuhkoca]

+1

[derDeno]

+1

[tomasalias]

+1

[josephcaxton]

+1

[ElectriPixie]

Can we at least get a dismiss button to make them go away? It is so infuriating having to look at these with no way to say NO!
So the only way I can find to make it go away is to create a pull request then close it without merging it, but that's just awful.

[tobias-farrenkopf]

+1

[Gladrat]

+1 for oprhan branches

[keetsta]

+1

[Seamus1989]

+1

[MadMud]

in my testing creating a single draft PR on that branch will prevent this banner being shown, even on further commits. Perhaps it will show up in a few days, though ;)

To be clear this is still annoying, but at least it clutters the PR section not the main view.