Feature request: Enforce merge strategy based on source and target branches

[rlos-dev]

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Hello GitHub team and community,

I’m currently using Git Flow with the following merge strategy:

• For PRs merging feature or bugfix branches into develop, I require squash merges to keep a clean linear history.
• For PRs merging from main into develop (integration PRs after production deploy), I require merge commits to preserve the full history.

Currently, GitHub allows enabling/disabling merge commit, squash, or rebase merges globally per repository or based on the target branch via branch rulesets.

However, it is not possible to restrict allowed merge types depending on the source branch of the PR.

This limitation prevents enforcing complex workflows where the merge strategy depends on both the source and target branches.

It would be very helpful to have a feature that allows:

• A native setting in repository or branch protection rules to restrict allowed merge commit types per branch or per PR source branch pattern.
• Or, the ability to detect and enforce the merge commit type in GitHub Actions, so that checks can fail if the wrong merge strategy is selected.

Thank you for considering this feature!
I’m curious if others in the community have similar needs or workarounds.

[github-actions[bot]]

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[rajeev-vishnu]

@rlos-dev Currently I'm using a job in my CI workflow to post a comment with the merge strategy to be used. It is very similar to how coverage reports are posted. But this is still not a watertight solution for this issue. There is also a way to disable all merge strategies and allow the bot to do it when you post a special comment like /merge. But all of these still have their cons.

A native feature to achieve this would be really helpful.

[heyakyra]

Duplicate of https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/8196#discussioncomment-18935780 ?