[Feat]: Add target branch as parameter for creating PR

[ambrosekwok]

Describe the feature

Add target merge branch option as parameter to the action.
Currently, it is same as upstream_branch

Use Case

I think the downstream repository may want to use main branch in the template repository, but prefer different branch like develop for creating the PR.

Proposed Solution

No response

Acknowledgements

• I may be able to implement this feature request

[AndreasAugustin]

Hi @ambrosekwok and thanks for the suggestion.
There is actually already a parameter pr_branch_name_prefix available..
Isn't that parameter the one you are looking for?

Initially missunderstood your request.
The target branch is currently always the default branch.

Will think about the suggestion.

[WolfGreyDev]

I have got around this by using matrix's, however, if you want to target a specific branch for a single run, you cant totally do that too. In the following, I've added the branch name after the repo to checkout that branch only.

steps:
  - name: Checkout ${{ github.repository }} ${{ matrix.branch }}
    uses: actions/checkout@v4
    with:
      ref: ${{ matrix.branch }}
      token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}

As I said earlier, I'm using a matrix to target two branches, so my strategy looks like the following:

strategy:
  matrix:
    branch: [main, beta]

[AndreasAugustin]

Hi @WolfGreyDev thanks for your workaround. Possibly this is the solution because you actually need to use the actions/checkout action your mentioned way or it won't pull the right branch (it is using the default branch per default).

Need to double check how to go on, but possibly a short documentation addon is sufficient.

Remark
Using a matrix like you did can possibly lead to issues if you have the same git hash in both branches (not super likely but possible).
You can add the mentioned parameter pr_branch_name_prefix, e.g. pr_branch_name_prefix: ${{matrix.branch}}

[WolfGreyDev]

That's right. Using the following sync settings:

- name: ${{ matrix.settings.name }}
  uses: AndreasAugustin/actions-template-sync@v2
  if: github.repository != env.SOURCE_REPOSITORY
  with:
    source_repo_path: ${{ env.SOURCE_REPOSITORY }}
    upstream_branch: ${{ matrix.branch }}
    pr_branch_name_prefix: ${{ matrix.branch }}_${{ matrix.settings.name }}
    pr_title: "[${{ matrix.branch }}] [${{ matrix.settings.name }}] ${{ matrix.settings.pr_title }}"
    pr_commit_msg: ${{ matrix.settings.pr_message }}
    pr_labels: ${{ matrix.settings.name }}
    git_remote_pull_params: ${{ matrix.branch }} ${{ matrix.settings.pull_params }}
    template_sync_ignore_file_path: .${{ matrix.settings.name }}-ignore

Obviously this has an additional matrix (settings) as I need different pull_params for different files/folders but it should be able to give others an idea of how to set this up. With the addition of the template_sync_ignore_file_path, this is all possible now. Though I still haven't found a solution to remove files that have been removed from the original repo, but that's another separate issue.