Skip to main content

Create a quality gate with GitHub

Learn how to create a quality gate that will only let merge code that passes Clayton's reviews.

Lorenzo Frattini avatar
Written by Lorenzo Frattini
Updated over a week ago

What is a quality gate?

A quality gate is the best way to enforce a quality policy in your organization. Setting up a quality gate allows you to prevent any code that doesn't pass code reviews from being merged into certain branches.

Key Benefits

  • Enforce code quality consistency across the entire project

  • Ensure that newly committed code doesn't introduce problems

  • Ensure issues are addressed before being merged

Before to start

Before proceeding with creating a quality gate in your VCS for your repo, you must enable Clayton Automation and create a dedicated Clayton connection user for your project.

GitHub App

Please have a look at our Help Article to learn how to set up our official app.

Enable Automation

Make sure to activate the Clayton Automation to monitor your code and start using webhooks to publish status updates for the PR and branch reviews on your VCS.
Please have a look at the dedicated Help Article to learn how to enable automation.

Steps

  1. In your repository settings in GitHub, go under Settings  > Branches
    ​

    ​

  2. In the Branch protection rules section, click on Add rule classic brach protection rule

  3. In the Branch name pattern field, type the branch name you would like to create the gate for

Suggested Setup for Branch Protection Rules

Since organizations have different workflows, we can only provide general guidance on how to set up your branch protection rules. Below are some of the key rules that Clayton needs to effectively review your pull requests, which you can adjust as needed.
​

One essential rule is to require a pull request before merging. Enabling this rule ensures that all commits are made to a non-protected branch and submitted via a pull request before they can be merged into a protected branch. For example, if all your pull requests need to be approved by your architect, you can configure two required approvals: one from your architect and one from Clayton.
​

Another useful option is to dismiss stale pull request approvals when new commits are pushed. This means that if new commits are added to a branch that matches the rule, any existing pull request approvals will be dismissed, ensuring that new changes are reviewed before merging.
​


You may also want to require status checks to pass before merging. This rule allows you to specify which status checks must be completed successfully before a branch can be merged. To set this up, you need to search for the specific status check that is important to your project. Keep in mind that this is limited by GitHub’s capabilities if you do not see the desired status check, it most likely means GitHub does not currently recognize it. For example, you might want to enforce security-related checks, such as ensuring that your code is Secure, Reliable, and Compliant.


By carefully configuring these rules, you ensure that your project follows a structured and consistent quality assurance process while allowing for flexibility based on your organization's needs.
​
​

Did this answer your question?