Batching

Reviewing twenty dependency PRs one at a time is nobody's idea of a good afternoon. The batch PR lets a reviewer, human or agent, collect the updates it has judged safe into one pull request, then merge that.

Adding an update

Every update PR ends with an "add to the batch" checkbox. Tick it, and on the next run (straight away under the server) the Count moves the update into the repository's batch PR on patchula/batch and closes the original with a comment linking to the batch. Being batched never counts as being closed by hand, so the update is not suppressed.

The batch keeps the version you reviewed. Each update PR records the targets it showed, and the batch uses those, not whatever was released since. A newer release opens as a fresh update PR once the batched one has closed; ticking that one replaces the dependency's item in the batch.

How the batch is built

There is one batch per repository and base branch. It applies every item's edit to the current base, and regenerates lockfiles once for the whole set, so a batch of eight npm updates runs aube once, not eight times. Items whose targets the base already satisfies drop out.

Taking things out

Each item in the batch body has its own checkbox. Tick it and the update goes back to its own pull request, on its original branch. If nothing is left, the batch PR closes. Closing the batch PR without merging sends every item back.

Merging

The batch never auto-merges unless you say so:

prs { batchMerge = true }

Then it merges behind the same check gates as any other update.

Details

The batch's items live in its body as a hidden marker, so any runner sees the same batch without local state. The PRs it carries are listed under "Batched by the Count" on the dashboard, and their branches stay until the batch merges. A group whose targets would need more than 12,000 bytes of marker cannot be batched. The batch branch name is reserved, so a group named batch is a configuration error.