Pull requests

Pull requests let you tell others in your team about changes you'd like to make to a view from a StarTeam Cross platform client (CPC). The Pulse Code review tool supports pull requests for StarTeam Cross platform clients beginning with version 17.2 of the StarTeam server. Earlier, Pull request feature was only available using the StarTeam GIT client.

Once a pull request is created, you can discuss and review the potential changes with other team members and add follow-up commits before your changes are merged into the base branch. To enable pull requests for a parent view, the view must be registered in Pulse and should be configured in Pulse to create pull requests from child streams.

The workflow for creating “Pull requests” from StarTeam CPC is as follows:

  1. Open a project (main/release view) from StarTeam server using Cross platform client. For example, let’s assume you need to make changes in view Release1.0 under Project “DemoProject”.

  2. To use pull requests, “Release1.0” view needs to be registered in Pulse and configured to create pull requests automatically from child streams.

  3. Create a new “pull request” type view. This is more like a sandbox/workbench view for check in the changes to be reviewed before they are promoted. For example, if a developer is working on a bug fix which applies to "Release 1.0" view, a new "pull request" view called “BugFix” needs to be created under the “Release 1.0” view using Cross platform client. There are essentially 2 ways to go about this:

    1. Select the “View” menu->”New view”-> select “Pull Request” from the dropdown as the view type. Specify a view name and change the “Default working folder” if required. This creates a new pull request view.

    2. Select an active process item (ex. Change Request) and right click on the sub menu “Create Pull request view”. This is a faster way to create Pull request view. The name of the view is auto generated and the selected process item is automatically shared and marked as active process item in the newly created view.

  4. Once view is created, all your code changes can be checked into the pull request view using CPC.

  5. A Pull request is automatically created in Pulse. Go to the Pulse perspective from CPC and publish the "Pull request" by selecting the reviewers whom you'd like to send it for review.

  6. Additional changes that are checked in to “BugFix” view will automatically become a part of the same pull request.

  7. When the pull request is approved after review, it can be committed by clicking on “Merge pull request” button on the Pull request. The pull request view can be optionally deleted from Pulse page by clicking on the “Delete stream” button at the bottom of the Pull request.

  8. Note: Using CPC, only rebase operations are allowed to the “Pull request” view and promote operations are not permitted. The only way to promote changes is through the Pulse page. The pull request view is a special type of lightweight view and hence all restrictions applied for lightweight view will apply to Pull request views.