PR Merge, Contributor-First Pull Request Integration

Merge external pull requests while maximizing original author attribution. Core principle: merge first, resolve conflicts after, never rewrite a contributor's work from scratch.

Core Principles

1. Preserve authorship, use gh pr merge --squash for clean PRs. For manual merges, use --author="Name <email>".
2. Merge first, fix after, accept the PR's approach even if it differs from local style. Fix conflicts in a separate commit.
3. Selective merge is OK, exclude files with --exclude when a PR contains features already implemented locally. Document what was excluded.
4. Never git apply + self-commit, this loses author attribution entirely.

Workflow

1. Triage Open PRs

gh pr list --repo OWNER/REPO --state open \
  --json number,title,author,additions,deletions,mergeable

Classify each PR: merge directly, merge with conflict resolution, selective merge, or close.

2. Merge Clean PRs via GitHub

Prefer gh pr merge, preserves author automatically:

gh pr merge NUMBER --repo OWNER/REPO --squash \
  --subject "feat: description (#NUMBER)"

3. Handle Conflicting PRs Locally

git fetch origin pull/NUMBER/head:pr-NUMBER
git merge pr-NUMBER --no-edit
# Resolve conflicts keeping both sides where possible
git add -A && git commit --no-edit

4. Selective Merge (Skip Some Files)

When a PR contains features already implemented locally:

gh pr diff NUMBER --repo OWNER/REPO | \
  git apply --exclude='path/to/skip.py' --exclude='CHANGELOG.md'
git commit --author="Author Name <author@email>" \
  -m "feat: description (#NUMBER)

Cherry-picked from PR #NUMBER. Excluded: file.py (already implemented)."

5. Close Duplicate/Superseded PRs

gh pr close NUMBER --repo OWNER/REPO \
  --comment "Fixed via PR #OTHER. Thank you for the contribution!"

6. Post-Merge Verification