Pull request and merge settings

All Bitbucket Cloud repositories come with the ability to create branches and pull requests. As an administrator, you can control the default state for pull requests and who can merge to these pull requests under certain conditions. You can access the settings described below from the Repository settings page.

To access the repository’s settings, go to the repository and select Repository settings on the left sidebar.

Repository settings page

Description

Branch permissions

To enforce specific workflows, you can set branch permissions for specific branches or branch patterns:

  • Control which users can push or merge changes to a branch or with a pull request. Learn more

  • Recommend or require specific conditions for a merge to a branch with merge checks. Learn more

Merge strategies

Merge strategies define how the commit history appears when someone merges a pull request into a repository. To merge, a user selects a Merge strategy from the Merge pull request dialog. As a repository administrator, you can determine which merge strategy appears in the dialog by default. To set the default option, select a Default merge strategy from the Merge strategies page.

For more details about merge strategies and why you'd use each one, see that section of the Merge a pull request page.

Default reviewers

When someone creates a pull request on the repository, you can specify reviewers that Bitbucket will automatically add to the pull request. To add a user, they must have access to the repository. From the Default reviewers page, enter the username or full name of the user and click Add.

Default pull request descriptions

The Description field is how pull request authors can set the context for a code review by adding images (like screenshots), links, or provide instructions for reviewers. This can also be especially useful to communicate review guidelines, or even to remind authors about common tasks that should be done while reviewing code. By default, pull request descriptions automatically populate with a list of relevant commits when there's more than one commit on the source branch.

Repository admins can add predefined descriptive text to all new pull requests from the Default description repository settings page.

Special variables

Use the special variable {{commit_messages}} in your description to create an unordered list of all commit messages when a pull request is created.

 

Additional Help