auto-merge functionality

[elray1]

There should be an optional setting at the hub level for whether to auto-merge PRs upon successful validation.

[annakrystalli]

Some useful resources here: https://github.com/pascalgn/automerge-action

The above action uses label to decide what to automerge. We could make the validation workflow create an automerge label on the PR. If validation succeeds, it could then trigger the automerge workflow.

Depending on how exactly we implement this, it could be set via hub config or it could be a whole separate GitHub Action that needs to be explicitly added to a hub that is either linked to the validations workflow or just monitors for the automerge label which the validations workflow creates.

It would be good to spell out when exactly this will be activated. for example, if a PR contains changes to files not validated, should auto-merge still be performed if validations pass?

[annakrystalli]

Useful resources supplied by @sbidari related to a sandbox hub where the functionality has been implemented

• https://github.com/CDCgov/covidhub-sandbox
• https://github.com/CDCgov/covidhub-sandbox/blob/main/.github/workflows/merge-validated-pr.yaml
• https://github.com/CDCgov/covidhub-sandbox/blob/main/.github/workflows/validate-submissions.yaml

[annakrystalli]

See also related issue hubverse-org/hubValidations#9 about having auto-merge functionality apply to authorised submittersonly which is also implemented globally in the above example. Ideally we'd want each model_id directory to only be editable by the team members specified in the a model metadata property.