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Gitea Pull Request

Description

The gitea/pullrequest action opens (or updates) a Gitea pull request once a target linked to the same scm has changed something and the change has been pushed.

It is the second half of the Gitea workflow: the gitea scm commits to a working branch and pushes it, this action turns that branch into a pull request. Without it, the branch is pushed and nothing else happens.

Note
kind: gitea is a deprecated alias for kind: gitea/pullrequest. It still works and logs a warning.

Requirements

An action never runs on its own: it needs an scmid pointing at an scm declared in the same manifest, and that scm must be of the matching kind. Both are checked when the manifest loads:

missing value for parameter(s) ["scmid"]
scm of kind "git" is not compatible with action of kind "github/pullrequest"

The action then reuses that scm rather than being configured twice. From it, it inherits:

FieldInherited value

sourcebranch

The working branch the scm created and pushed - the branch carrying the changes.

targetbranch

The scm’s branch - the branch the pull request is opened against.

owner, repository

The repository the scm points at.

credentials, URL

Whatever the scm was given, when the action does not set its own.

Every one of these can be overridden in the action spec, but there is rarely a good reason to: a mismatch between the branch the scm pushed and the branch the action opens the request from produces a request with no changes in it.

Where the title comes from

The title is resolved from the first of these that is set:

  1. spec.title on the action

  2. title on the action itself, one level above spec

  3. the name of the associated target, when there is exactly one

  4. the pipeline name

The second form is the usual one:

actions:
  default:
    kind: <the action kind>
    scmid: default
    title: 'deps: bump axios version'

Create or update

Updatecli looks for a request already open between the same two branches before creating one, so running the same pipeline repeatedly gives you one long-lived request per pipeline and repository rather than one per run. Whether that existing request is then refreshed with the latest title and description differs by plugin (each page says which).

Creation is also skipped, without failing the pipeline, when either branch is missing from the remote. Updatecli attempts it on every run regardless, so that a request closed by hand or lost to an earlier failure gets reopened on the next one.

Pipeline URL

When Updatecli detects that it runs inside a CI job, it appends a link to that job in the request description. Set disablepipelineurl: true on the action (next to kind and scmid, not inside spec) to leave it out.

Detection is limited to three engines, each recognised by one environment variable: Jenkins (JENKINS_URL), GitLab CI (GITLAB_CI), and GitHub Actions (GITHUB_ACTION), checked in that order. Anywhere else no link is added, whatever this setting says.

Parameters

NameTypeDescriptionRequired
assigneesarray

“assignees” defines a list of assignees for the pull request.

default: No assignees are set on the pull request.

remark: You can use this to assign specific users to review the pull request. Make sure the users you specify have access to the repository.

bodystring

“body” defines a custom body pullrequest.

default: By default a pullrequest body is generated out of a pipeline execution.

remark: Unless you know what you are doing, you shouldn’t set this value and rely on the sane default. “body” is useful to provide additional information when reviewing pullrequest, such as changelog url.

ownerstring

“owner” defines the Gitea repository owner.

remark: unless you know what you are doing, you shouldn’t set this value and rely on the scmid to provide the sane default.

repositorystring

“repository” defines the Gitea repository for a specific owner

remark: unless you know what you are doing, you shouldn’t set this value and rely on the scmid to provide the sane default.

sourcebranchstring

“sourcebranch” defines the branch name used as a source to create the Gitea pullrequest.

default: “sourcebranch” inherits the value from the scm branch if a scm of kind “gitea” is specified by the action.

remark: unless you know what you are doing, you shouldn’t set this value and rely on the scmid to provide the sane default.

targetbranchstring

“targetbranch” defines the branch name used as a target to create the Gitea pullrequest.

default: “targetbranch” inherits the value from the scm working branch if a scm of kind “gitea” is specified by the action.

remark: unless you know what you are doing, you shouldn’t set this value and rely on the scmid to provide the sane default. the Gitea scm will create and use a working branch such as updatecli_xxxx

titlestring

“title” defines the Gitea pullrequest title

default: A Gitea pullrequest title is defined by one of the following location (first match) 1. title is defined by the spec such as:

actions: default: kind: gitea/pullrequest scmid: default spec: title: This is my awesome title

  1. title is defined by the action such as:

actions: default: kind: gitea/pullrequest scmid default title: This is my awesome title

  1. title is defined by the first associated target title

  2. title is defined by the pipeline title

remark: usually we prefer to go with option 2

tokenstring

“token” specifies the credential used to authenticate with Gitea API

remark: A token is a sensitive information, it’s recommended to not set this value directly in the configuration file but to use an environment variable or a SOPS file.

The value can be set to {{ requiredEnv "GITEA_TOKEN"}} to retrieve the token from the environment variable GITHUB_TOKEN or {{ .gitea.token }} to retrieve the token from a SOPS file.

For more information, about a SOPS file, please refer to the following documentation: https://github.com/getsops/sops

urlstring“url” defines the Gitea url to interact with
usernamestring“username” defines the username used to authenticate with Gitea API

The spec is small - title, body, and assignees, on top of the identity fields inherited from the scm. Labels, reviewers, and merge automation are not exposed by this plugin.

body

Replaces the description Updatecli generates from the pipeline run. Useful to add context a reviewer needs, such as a changelog URL.

assignees

Gitea usernames, who must have access to the repository. They are set when the pull request is created and not reapplied afterwards.

Updating an existing pull request

When a pull request is already open between the two branches, this plugin leaves it untouched - it does not refresh the title or the description with the latest run, unlike the GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket Cloud, and Azure DevOps plugins. The report still links to it.

Warning

If the API call creating the pull request fails, for any reason, Updatecli logs Gitea pullrequest not created, skipping and the pipeline still reports success. Run with --debug to see the response body when a pull request you expected does not appear. The other action plugins only swallow a "not found" response this way.

Warning

The sourcebranch and targetbranch descriptions in the table above have their defaults swapped: sourcebranch inherits the scm’s working branch (the one carrying the commits) and targetbranch inherits the scm’s branch, the one the pull request is opened against. Leave both unset and the inheritance is correct regardless.

Cleanup

Cleanup is not implemented for this plugin. updatecli apply --clean-git-branches removes working branches that ended up with no changes, but a pull request already opened for one of them is not closed automatically (that stays a manual step).

The same goes for the options this plugin does not expose, such as labels and reviewers. If closing stale pull requests, or anything else missing here, is something you would use, say so on the Updatecli issue tracker (these gaps are unimplemented rather than deliberate, and interest is what gets them prioritised).

Example

# updatecli.yaml
# updatecli.yaml
# updatecli diff --config updatecli.yaml
#
name: Show Gitea pipeline example

scms:
  gitea:
    kind: gitea
    spec:
      url: "demo.gitea.com"
      owner: "olblak"
      repository: "updatecli-mirror"
      branch: main

# Sources are responsible to fetch information from third location such as npm registry.
sources:
  updatecli:
    name: Get latest axios version
    kind: npm
    spec:
      name: axios

# Targets are responsible to update targeted files such as a yaml file.
targets:
  npm:
    name: Update e2e test file
    kind: yaml
    sourceid: updatecli
    scmid: gitea
    spec:
      file: e2e/updatecli.d/success.d/npm.yaml
      key: $.conditions.axios.spec.version

# Actions such as gitlab/mergerequest is triggered if a target is updated.
actions:
  default:
    kind: gitea/pullrequest
    scmid: gitea
    title: Bump axios version

Links

Last updated on July 30, 2026
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