Submit Rule

A Submit Rule in Gerrit is logic that defines when a change is submittable. By default, a change is submittable when it gets at least one highest vote in each voting category and has no lowest vote (aka veto vote) in any category. Typically, this means that a change needs Code-Review+2, Verified+1 and has neither Code-Review-2 nor Verified-1 to become submittable.

While this rule is a good default, there are projects which need more flexibility for defining when a change is submittable. In Gerrit, it is possible to use Prolog based rules to provide project specific submit rules and replace the default submit rules. Using Prolog based rules, project owners can define a set of criteria which must be fulfilled for a change to become submittable. For a change that is not submittable, the set of needed criteria is displayed in the Gerrit UI.

Note
 Loading and executing Prolog submit rules may be disabled by setting rules.enable=false in the Gerrit config file (see rules section)

This discussion thread explains why Prolog was chosen for the purpose of writing project specific submit rules. Gerrit 2.2.2 ReleaseNotes introduces Prolog support in Gerrit.

Submit Type

A Submit Type is a strategy that is used on submit to integrate the change into the destination branch. Supported submit types are:

  • Fast Forward Only

  • Merge If Necessary

  • Merge Always

  • Cherry Pick

  • Rebase If Necessary

Submit Type is a project global setting. This means that the same submit type is used for all changes of one project.

Projects which need more flexibility in choosing, or enforcing, a submit type can use Prolog based submit type which replaces the project’s default submit type.

Prolog based submit type computes a submit type for each change. The computed submit type is shown on the change screen for each change.

When submitting changes in a batch using "Submit including ancestors" or "Submit whole topic", submit type rules may not be used to mix submit types on a single branch, and trying to submit such a batch will fail. This avoids potentially confusing behavior and spurious submit failures. It is recommended to only use submit type rules to change submit types for an entire branch, which avoids this situation.

Prolog Language

This document is not a complete Prolog tutorial. This Wikipedia page on Prolog is a good starting point for learning the Prolog language. This document will only explain some elements of Prolog that are necessary to understand the provided examples.

Prolog in Gerrit

Gerrit uses its own fork of the original prolog-cafe project. Gerrit embeds the prolog-cafe library and can interpret Prolog programs at runtime.

Interactive Prolog Cafe Shell

For interactive testing and playing with Prolog, Gerrit provides the prolog-shell program which opens an interactive Prolog interpreter shell.

Note
 The interactive shell is just a prolog shell, it does not load a gerrit server environment and thus is not intended for testing submit rules.

SWI-Prolog

Instead of using the prolog-shell program one can also use the SWI-Prolog environment. It provides a better shell interface and a graphical source-level debugger.

The rules.pl file

This section explains how to create and edit project specific submit rules. How to actually write the submit rules is explained in the next section.

Project specific submit rules are stored in the rules.pl file in the refs/meta/config branch of that project. Therefore, we need to fetch and checkout the refs/meta/config branch in order to create or edit the rules.pl file:

  $ git fetch origin refs/meta/config:config
  $ git checkout config
  ... edit or create the rules.pl file
  $ git add rules.pl
  $ git commit -m "My submit rules"
  $ git push origin HEAD:refs/meta/config

How to write submit rules

Whenever Gerrit needs to evaluate submit rules for a change C from project P it will first initialize the embedded Prolog interpreter by:

  • consulting a set of facts about the change C

  • consulting the rules.pl from the project P

Conceptually we can imagine that Gerrit adds a set of facts about the change C on top of the rules.pl file and then consults it. The set of facts about the change C will look like:

  :- package gerrit.                                                   (1)

  commit_author(user(1000000), 'John Doe', 'john.doe@example.com').    (2)
  commit_committer(user(1000000), 'John Doe', 'john.doe@example.com'). (3)
  commit_message('Add plugin support to Gerrit').                      (4)
  ...

  1. Gerrit will provide its facts in a package named gerrit. This means we have to use qualified names when writing our code and referencing these facts. For example: gerrit:commit_author(ID, N, M)

  2. user ID, full name and email address of the commit author

  3. user ID, full name and email address of the commit committer

  4. commit message

A complete set of facts which Gerrit provides about the change is listed in the Prolog Facts for Gerrit Change.

By default, Gerrit will search for a submit_rule/1 predicate in the rules.pl file, evaluate the submit_rule(X) and then inspect the value of X in order to decide whether the change is submittable or not and also to find the set of needed criteria for the change to become submittable. This means that Gerrit has an expectation on the format and value of the result of the submit_rule predicate which is expected to be a submit term of the following format:

  submit(label(label-name, status) [, label(label-name, status)]*)

where label-name is usually 'Code-Review' or 'Verified' but could also be any other string (see examples below). The status is one of:

  • ok(user(ID)). This status is used to tell that this label/category has been met.

  • need(_) is used to tell that this label/category is needed for the change to become submittable.

  • reject(user(ID)). This status is used to tell that this label/category is blocking submission of the change.

  • impossible(_) is used when the logic knows that the change cannot be submitted as-is. This is meant for cases where the logic requires members of a specific group to apply a specific label on a change, but no users are in that group. This is usually caused by misconfiguration of permissions.

  • may(_) allows expression of approval categories that are optional, i.e. could either be set or unset without ever influencing whether the change could be submitted.

Note
 For a change to be submittable all label terms contained in the returned submit term must have either ok or may status.
Important
 Gerrit will let the Prolog engine continue searching for solutions of the submit_rule(X) query until it finds the first one where all labels in the return result have either status ok or may or there are no more solutions. If a solution where all labels have status ok is found then all previously found solutions are ignored. Otherwise, all labels names with status need from all solutions will be displayed in the UI indicating the set of conditions needed for the change to become submittable.

Here some examples of possible return values from the submit_rule predicate:

  submit(label('Code-Review', ok(user(ID))))                        (1)
  submit(label('Code-Review', ok(user(ID))),
      label('Verified', reject(user(ID))))                          (2)
  submit(label('Author-is-John-Doe', need(_))                       (3)

  1. label 'Code-Review' is met. As there are no other labels in the return result, the change is submittable.

  2. label 'Verified' is rejected. Change is not submittable.

  3. label 'Author-is-John-Doe' is needed for the change to become submittable. Note that this tells nothing about how this criteria will be met. It is up to the implementer of the submit_rule to return label('Author-is-John-Doe', ok(user(ID))) when this criteria is met. Most likely, it will have to match against gerrit:commit_author in order to check if this criteria is met. This will become clear through the examples below.

Of course, when implementing the submit_rule we will use the facts about the change that are already provided by Gerrit.

Another aspect of the return result from the submit_rule predicate is that Gerrit uses it to decide which set of labels to display on the change review screen for voting. If the return result contains label 'ABC' and if the label 'ABC' is defined for the project then voting for the label 'ABC' will be displayed. Otherwise, it is not displayed. Note that the project doesn’t need a defined label for each label contained in the result of submit_rule predicate. For example, the decision whether 'Author-is-John-Doe' label is met will probably not be made by explicit voting but, instead, by inspecting the facts about the change.

Submit Filter

Another mechanism of changing the default submit rules is to implement the submit_filter/2 predicate. While Gerrit will search for the submit_rule only in the rules.pl file of the current project, the submit_filter will be searched for in the rules.pl of all parent projects of the current project, but not in the rules.pl of the current project. The search will start from the immediate parent of the current project, then in the parent project of that project and so on until, and including, the 'All-Projects' project.

The purpose of the submit filter is, as its name says, to filter the results of the submit_rule. Therefore, the submit_filter predicate has two parameters:

  submit_filter(In, Out) :- ...

Gerrit will invoke submit_filter with the In parameter containing a submit structure produced by the submit_rule and will take the value of the Out parameter as the result.

The Out value of a submit_filter will become the In value for the next submit_filter in the parent line. The value of the Out parameter of the top-most submit_filter is the final result of the submit rule that is used to decide whether a change is submittable or not.

Important
 submit_filter is a mechanism for Gerrit administrators to implement and enforce submit rules that would apply to all projects while submit_rule is a mechanism for project owners to implement project specific submit rules. However, project owners who own several projects could also make use of submit_filter by using a common parent project for all their projects and implementing the submit_filter in this common parent project. This way they can avoid implementing the same submit_rule in all their projects.

The following "drawing" illustrates the order of the invocation and the chaining of the results of the submit_rule and submit_filter predicates.

  All-Projects
  ^   submit_filter(B, S) :- ...  (4)
  |
  Parent-3
  ^   <no submit filter here>
  |
  Parent-2
  ^   submit_filter(A, B) :- ...  (3)
  |
  Parent-1
  ^   submit_filter(X, A) :- ...  (2)
  |
  MyProject
      submit_rule(X) :- ...       (1)

  1. The submit_rule of MyProject is invoked first.

  2. The result X is filtered through the submit_filter from the Parent-1 project.

  3. The result of submit_filter from Parent-1 project is filtered by the submit_filter in the Parent-2 project. Since Parent-3 project doesn’t have a submit_filter it is skipped.

  4. The result of submit_filter from Parent-2 project is filtered by the submit_filter in the All-Projects project. The value in S is the final value of the submit rule evaluation.

Note
 If MyProject doesn’t define its own submit_rule Gerrit will invoke the default implementation of submit rule that is named gerrit:default_submit and its result will be filtered as described above.

How to write submit type

Writing custom submit type logic in Prolog is similar to writing submit rules. The only difference is that one has to implement a submit_type predicate (instead of the submit_rule) and that the return result of the submit_type has to be an atom that represents one of the supported submit types:

  • fast_forward_only

  • merge_if_necessary

  • merge_always

  • cherry_pick

  • rebase_if_necessary

Submit Type Filter

Submit type filter works the same way as the Submit Filter where the name of the filter predicate is submit_type_filter.

  submit_type_filter(In, Out).

Gerrit will invoke submit_type_filter with the In parameter containing a result of the submit_type and will take the value of the Out parameter as the result.

Testing submit rules

The prolog environment running the submit_rule is loaded with state describing the change that is being evaluated. The easiest way to load this state is to test your submit_rule against a real change on a running gerrit instance. The command test-submit rule loads a specific change and executes the submit_rule. It optionally reads the rule from from stdin to facilitate easy testing.

  $ cat rules.pl | ssh gerrit_srv gerrit test-submit rule I45e080b105a50a625cc8e1fb5b357c0bfabe6d68 -s

Prolog vs Gerrit plugin for project specific submit rules

Since version 2.5 Gerrit supports plugins and extension points. A plugin or an extension point could also be used as another means to provide custom submit rules. One could ask for a guideline when to use Prolog based submit rules and when to go for writing a new plugin. Writing a Prolog program is usually much faster than writing a Gerrit plugin. Prolog based submit rules can be pushed to a project by project owners while Gerrit plugins could only be installed by Gerrit administrators. In addition, Prolog based submit rules can be pushed for review by pushing to refs/for/refs/meta/config branch.

On the other hand, Prolog based submit rules get a limited amount of facts about the change exposed to them. Gerrit plugins get full access to Gerrit internals and can potentially check more things than Prolog based rules.

From version 2.6 Gerrit plugins can contribute Prolog predicates. This way, we can make use of the plugin provided predicates when writing Prolog based rules.

Examples - Submit Rule

The following examples should serve as a cookbook for developing own submit rules. Some of them are too trivial to be used in production and their only purpose is to provide step by step introduction and understanding.

Some of the examples will implement the submit_rule and some will implement the submit_filter just to show both possibilities. Remember that submit_rule is only invoked from the current project and submit_filter is invoked from all parent projects. This is the most important fact in deciding whether to implement submit_rule or submit_filter.

Example 1: Make every change submittable

Let’s start with a most trivial example where we would make every change submittable regardless of the votes it has:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(W)) :-
    W = label('Any-Label-Name', ok(user(1000000))).

In this case we make no use of facts about the change. We don’t need it as we are simply making every change submittable. Note that, in this case, the Gerrit UI will not show the UI for voting for the standard 'Code-Review' and 'Verified' categories as labels with these names are not part of the return result. The 'Any-Label-Name' could really be any string.

The user(1000000) represents the user whose account ID is 1000000.

Note
 Instead of the account ID 1000000 we could have used any other account ID. The following examples will use user(ID) instead of user(1000000) because it is easier to read and doesn’t suggest that there is anything special with the account ID 1000000.

Example 2: Every change submittable and voting in the standard categories possible

This is continuation of the previous example where, in addition, to making every change submittable we want to enable voting in the standard 'Code-Review' and 'Verified' categories.

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(CR, V)) :-
    CR = label('Code-Review', ok(user(ID))),
    V = label('Verified', ok(user(ID))).

Since for every change all label statuses are 'ok' every change will be submittable. Voting in the standard labels will be shown in the UI as the standard label names are included in the return result.

Example 3: Nothing is submittable

This example shows how to make all changes non-submittable regardless of the votes they have.

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(R)) :-
    R = label('Any-Label-Name', reject(user(ID))).

Since for any change we return only one label with status reject, no change will be submittable. The UI will, however, not indicate what is needed for a change to become submittable as we return no labels with status need.

Example 4: Nothing is submittable but UI shows several 'Need …​' criteria

In this example no change is submittable but here we show how to present 'Need <label>' information to the user in the UI.

rules.pl

% In the UI this will show: Need Any-Label-Name
submit_rule(submit(N)) :-
    N = label('Any-Label-Name', need(_)).

% We could define more "need" labels by adding more rules
submit_rule(submit(N)) :-
    N = label('Another-Label-Name', need(_)).

% or by providing more than one need label in the same rule
submit_rule(submit(NX, NY)) :-
    NX = label('X-Label-Name', need(_)),
    NY = label('Y-Label-Name', need(_)).

In the UI this will show:

  • Need Any-Label-Name

  • Need Another-Label-Name

  • Need X-Label-Name

  • Need Y-Label-Name

From the example above we can see a few more things:

  • comment in Prolog starts with the % character

  • there could be multiple submit_rule predicates. Since Prolog, by default, tries to find all solutions for a query, the result will be union of all solutions. Therefore, we see all 4 need labels in the UI.

Example 5: The 'Need …​' labels not shown when change is submittable

This example shows that, when there is a solution for submit_rule(X) where all labels have status ok then Gerrit will not show any labels with the need status from any of the previous submit_rule(X) solutions.

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(N)) :-
    N = label('Some-Condition', need(_)).

submit_rule(submit(OK)) :-
    OK = label('Another-Condition', ok(user(ID))).

The 'Need Some-Condition' will not be shown in the UI because of the result of the second rule.

The same is valid if the two rules are swapped:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(OK)) :-
    OK = label('Another-Condition', ok(user(ID))).

submit_rule(submit(N)) :-
    N = label('Some-Condition', need(_)).

The result of the first rule will stop search for any further solutions.

Example 6: Make change submittable if commit author is "John Doe"

This is the first example where we will use the Prolog facts about a change that are automatically exposed by Gerrit. Our goal is to make any change submittable when the commit author is named 'John Doe'. In the very first step let’s make sure Gerrit UI shows 'Need Author-is-John-Doe' in the UI to clearly indicate to the user what is needed for a change to become submittable:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', need(_)).

This will show:

  • Need Author-is-John-Doe

in the UI but no change will be submittable yet. Let’s add another rule:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', need(_)).

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    gerrit:commit_author(A, 'John Doe', _),
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', ok(A)).

In the second rule we return ok status for the 'Author-is-John-Doe' label if there is a commit_author fact where the full name is 'John Doe'. If author of a change is 'John Doe' then the second rule will return a solution where all labels have ok status and the change will become submittable. If author of a change is not 'John Doe' then only the first rule will produce a solution. The UI will show 'Need Author-is-John-Doe' but, as expected, the change will not be submittable.

Instead of checking by full name we could also check by the email address:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', need(_)).

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    gerrit:commit_author(A, _, 'john.doe@example.com'),
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', ok(A)).

or by user id (assuming it is 1000000):

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', need(_)).

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    U = user(1000000),
    gerrit:commit_author(U, _, _),
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', ok(U)).

or by a combination of these 3 attributes:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', need(_)).

submit_rule(submit(Author)) :-
    gerrit:commit_author(A, 'John Doe', 'john.doe@example.com'),
    Author = label('Author-is-John-Doe', ok(A)).

Example 7: Make change submittable if commit message starts with "Fix "

Besides showing how to make use of the commit message text the purpose of this example is also to show how to match only a part of a string symbol. Similarly like commit author the commit message is provided as a string symbol which is an atom in Prolog terms. When working with an atom we could only match against the whole value. To match only part of a string symbol we have, at least, two options:

  • convert the string symbol into a list of characters and then perform the "classical" list matching

  • use the regex_matches/2 or, even more convenient, the gerrit:commit_message_matches/1 predicate

Let’s implement both options:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(Fix)) :-
    Fix = label('Commit-Message-starts-with-Fix', need(_)).

submit_rule(submit(Fix)) :-
    gerrit:commit_message(M), name(M, L), starts_with(L, "Fix "),
    gerrit:commit_author(A),
    Fix = label('Commit-Message-starts-with-Fix', ok(A)).

starts_with(L, []).
starts_with([H|T1], [H|T2]) :- starts_with(T1, T2).
Note
 The name/2 embedded predicate is used to convert a string symbol into a list of characters. A string abc is converted into a list of characters [97, 98, 99]. A double quoted string in Prolog is just a shortcut for creating a list of characters. "abc" is a shortcut for [97, 98, 99]. This is why we use double quotes for the "Trivial Fix" in the example above.

The starts_with predicate is self explaining.

Using the gerrit:commit_message_matches predicate is probably more efficient:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(Fix)) :-
    Fix = label('Commit-Message-starts-with-Fix', need(_)).

submit_rule(submit(Fix)) :-
    gerrit:commit_message_matches('^Fix '),
    gerrit:commit_author(A),
    Fix = label('Commit-Message-starts-with-Fix', ok(A)).

The previous example could also be written so that it first checks if the commit message starts with 'Fix '. If true then it sets OK for that category and stops further backtracking by using the cut ! operator:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(Fix)) :-
    gerrit:commit_message_matches('^Fix '),
    gerrit:commit_author(A),
    Fix = label('Commit-Message-starts-with-Fix', ok(A)),
    !.

% Message does not start with 'Fix ' so Fix is needed to submit
submit_rule(submit(Fix)) :-
    Fix = label('Commit-Message-starts-with-Fix', need(_)).

The default submit policy

All examples until now concentrate on one particular aspect of change data. However, in real-life scenarios we would rather want to reuse Gerrit’s default submit policy and extend/change it for our specific purpose. This could be done in one of the following ways:

  • understand how the default submit policy is implemented and use that as a template for implementing custom submit rules,

  • invoke the default submit rule implementation and then perform further actions on its return result.

Default submit rule implementation

The default submit rule with the two default categories, Code-Review and Verified, can be implemented as:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(V, CR)) :-
    gerrit:max_with_block(-2, 2, 'Code-Review', CR),
    gerrit:max_with_block(-1, 1, 'Verified', V).

Once this implementation is understood it can be customized to implement project specific submit rules. Note, that this implementation hardcodes the two default categories. Introducing a new category in the database would require introducing the same category here or a submit_filter in a parent project would have to care about including the new category in the result of this submit_rule. On the other side, this example is easy to read and understand.

Reusing the default submit policy

To get results of Gerrit’s default submit policy we use the gerrit:default_submit predicate. The gerrit:default_submit(X) includes all categories from the database. This means that if we write a submit rule like this:

rules.pl

submit_rule(X) :- gerrit:default_submit(X).

it is equivalent to not using rules.pl at all. We just delegate to default logic. However, once we invoke the gerrit:default_submit(X) we can perform further actions on the return result X and apply our specific logic. The following pattern illustrates this technique:

rules.pl

submit_rule(S) :- gerrit:default_submit(R), project_specific_policy(R, S).

project_specific_policy(R, S) :- ...

In the following examples both styles will be shown.

Example 8: Make change submittable only if Code-Review+2 is given by a non author

In this example we introduce a new label Non-Author-Code-Review and make it satisfied if there is at least one Code-Review+2 from a non author. All other default policies like the Verified category and vetoing changes still apply.

Reusing the gerrit:default_submit

First, we invoke gerrit:default_submit to compute the result for the default submit policy and then add the Non-Author-Code-Review label to it. The Non-Author-Code-Review label is added with status ok if such an approval exists or with status need if it doesn’t exist.

rules.pl

submit_rule(S) :-
    gerrit:default_submit(X),
    X =.. [submit | Ls],
    add_non_author_approval(Ls, R),
    S =.. [submit | R].

add_non_author_approval(S1, S2) :-
    gerrit:commit_author(A),
    gerrit:commit_label(label('Code-Review', 2), R),
    R \= A, !,
    S2 = [label('Non-Author-Code-Review', ok(R)) | S1].
add_non_author_approval(S1, [label('Non-Author-Code-Review', need(_)) | S1]).

This example uses the univ operator =.. to "unpack" the result of the default_submit, which is a structure of the form submit(label('Code-Review', ok(user(ID))), label('Verified', need()), …​) into a list like [submit, label('Code-Review', ok(user(ID))), label('Verified', need()), …​]. Then we process the tail of the list (the list of labels) as a Prolog list, which is much easier than processing a structure. In the end we use the same univ operator to convert the resulting list of labels back into a submit structure which is expected as a return result. The univ operator works both ways.

In add_non_author_approval we use the cut operator ! to prevent Prolog from searching for more solutions once the cut point is reached. This is important because in the second add_non_author_approval rule we just add the label('Non-Author-Code-Review', need(_)) without first checking that there is no non author Code-Review+2. The second rule will only be reached if the cut in the first rule is not reached and it only happens if a predicate before the cut fails.

Don’t use gerrit:default_submit

Let’s implement the same submit rule the other way, without reusing the gerrit:default_submit:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(CR, V)) :-
    base(CR, V),
    CR = label(_, ok(Reviewer)),
    gerrit:commit_author(Author),
    Author \= Reviewer,
    !.

submit_rule(submit(CR, V, N)) :-
    base(CR, V),
    N = label('Non-Author-Code-Review', need(_)).

base(CR, V) :-
    gerrit:max_with_block(-2, 2, 'Code-Review', CR),
    gerrit:max_with_block(-1, 1, 'Verified', V).

The latter implementation is probably easier to understand and the code looks cleaner. Note, however, that the latter implementation will always return the two standard categories only (Code-Review and Verified) even if a new category has been inserted into the database. To include the new category the rules.pl would need to be modified or a submit_filter in a parent project would have to care about including the new category in the result of this submit_rule.

The former example, however, would include any newly added category as it invokes the gerrit:default_submit and then modifies its result.

Which of these two behaviors is desired will always depend on how a particular Gerrit server is managed.

Example 9: Remove the Verified category

A project has no build and test. It consists of only text files and needs only code review. We want to remove the Verified category from this project so that Code-Review+2 is the only criteria for a change to become submittable. We also want the UI to not show the Verified category in the table with votes and on the voting screen.

This is quite simple without reusing the gerrit:default_submit:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(CR)) :-
    gerrit:max_with_block(-2, 2, 'Code-Review', CR).

Implementing the same rule by reusing gerrit:default_submit is a bit more complex:

rules.pl

submit_rule(S) :-
    gerrit:default_submit(X),
    X =.. [submit | Ls],
    remove_verified_category(Ls, R),
    S =.. [submit | R].

remove_verified_category([], []).
remove_verified_category([label('Verified', _) | T], R) :- remove_verified_category(T, R), !.
remove_verified_category([H|T], [H|R]) :- remove_verified_category(T, R).

Example 10: Combine examples 8 and 9

In this example we want to both remove the verified and have the four eyes principle. This means we want a combination of examples 7 and 8.

rules.pl

submit_rule(S) :-
    gerrit:default_submit(X),
    X =.. [submit | Ls],
    remove_verified_category(Ls, R1),
    add_non_author_approval(R1, R),
    S =.. [submit | R].

The remove_verified_category and add_non_author_approval predicates are the same as defined in the previous two examples.

Without reusing the gerrit:default_submit the same example may be implemented as:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(CR)) :-
    base(CR),
    CR = label(_, ok(Reviewer)),
    gerrit:commit_author(Author),
    Author \= Reviewer,
    !.

submit_rule(submit(CR, N)) :-
    base(CR),
    N = label('Non-Author-Code-Review', need(_)).

base(CR) :-
    gerrit:max_with_block(-2, 2, 'Code-Review', CR).

Example 11: Remove the Verified category from all projects

Example 9, implements submit_rule that removes the Verified category from one project. In this example we do the same but we want to remove the Verified category from all projects. This means we have to implement submit_filter and we have to do that in the rules.pl of the All-Projects project.

rules.pl

submit_filter(In, Out) :-
    In =.. [submit | Ls],
    remove_verified_category(Ls, R),
    Out =.. [submit | R].

remove_verified_category([], []).
remove_verified_category([label('Verified', _) | T], R) :- remove_verified_category(T, R), !.
remove_verified_category([H|T], [H|R]) :- remove_verified_category(T, R).

Example 12: On release branches require DrNo in addition to project rules

A new category 'DrNo' is added to the database and is required for release branches. To mark a branch as a release branch we use drno('refs/heads/branch').

rules.pl

drno('refs/heads/master').
drno('refs/heads/stable-2.3').
drno('refs/heads/stable-2.4').
drno('refs/heads/stable-2.5').
drno('refs/heads/stable-2.5').

submit_filter(In, Out) :-
    gerrit:change_branch(Branch),
    drno(Branch),
    !,
    In =.. [submit | I],
    gerrit:max_with_block(-1, 1, 'DrNo', DrNo),
    Out =.. [submit, DrNo | I].

submit_filter(In, Out) :- In = Out.

Example 13: 1+1=2 Code-Review

In this example we introduce accumulative voting to determine if a change is submittable or not. We modify the standard Code-Review to be accumulative, and make the change submittable if the total score is 2 or higher.

The code in this example is very similar to Example 8, with the addition of findall/3 and gerrit:remove_label.

The findall/3 embedded predicate is used to form a list of all objects that satisfy a specified Goal. In this example it is used to get a list of all the Code-Review scores. gerrit:remove_label is a built-in helper that is implemented similarly to the remove_verified_category as seen in the previous example.

rules.pl

sum_list([], 0).
sum_list([H | Rest], Sum) :- sum_list(Rest,Tmp), Sum is H + Tmp.

add_category_min_score(In, Category, Min,  P) :-
    findall(X, gerrit:commit_label(label(Category,X),R),Z),
    sum_list(Z, Sum),
    Sum >= Min, !,
    P = [label(Category,ok(R)) | In].

add_category_min_score(In, Category,Min,P) :-
    P = [label(Category,need(Min)) | In].

submit_rule(S) :-
    gerrit:default_submit(X),
    X =.. [submit | Ls],
    gerrit:remove_label(Ls,label('Code-Review',_),NoCR),
    add_category_min_score(NoCR,'Code-Review', 2, Labels),
    S =.. [submit | Labels].

Implementing the same example without using gerrit:default_submit:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(CR, V)) :-
    sum(2, 'Code-Review', CR),
    gerrit:max_with_block(-1, 1, 'Verified', V).

% Sum the votes in a category. Uses a helper function score/2
% to select out only the score values the given category.
sum(VotesNeeded, Category, label(Category, ok(_))) :-
    findall(Score, score(Category, Score), All),
    sum_list(All, Sum),
    Sum >= VotesNeeded,
    !.
sum(VotesNeeded, Category, label(Category, need(VotesNeeded))).

score(Category, Score) :-
    gerrit:commit_label(label(Category, Score), User).

% Simple Prolog routine to sum a list of integers.
sum_list(List, Sum)   :- sum_list(List, 0, Sum).
sum_list([X|T], Y, S) :- Z is X + Y, sum_list(T, Z, S).
sum_list([], S, S).

Example 14: Master and apprentice

The master and apprentice example allow you to specify a user (the master) that must approve all changes done by another user (the apprentice).

The code first checks if the commit author is in the apprentice database. If the commit is done by an apprentice, it will check if there is a +2 review by the associated master.

rules.pl

% master_apprentice(Master, Apprentice).
% Extend this with appropriate user-id for your master/apprentice setup.
master_apprentice(user(1000064), user(1000000)).

submit_rule(S) :-
    gerrit:default_submit(In),
    In =.. [submit | Ls],
    add_apprentice_master(Ls, R),
    S =.. [submit | R].

check_master_approval(S1, S2, Master) :-
    gerrit:commit_label(label('Code-Review', 2), R),
    R = Master, !,
    S2 = [label('Master-Approval', ok(R)) | S1].
check_master_approval(S1, [label('Master-Approval', need(_)) | S1], _).

add_apprentice_master(S1, S2) :-
    gerrit:commit_author(Id),
    master_apprentice(Master, Id),
    !,
    check_master_approval(S1, S2, Master).

add_apprentice_master(S, S).

Example 15: Only allow Author to submit change

This example adds a new needed category Only-Author-Can-Submit for any user that is not the author of the patch. This effectively blocks all users except the author from submitting the change. This could result in an impossible situation if the author does not have permissions for submitting the change.

rules.pl

submit_rule(S) :-
    gerrit:default_submit(In),
    In =.. [submit | Ls],
    only_allow_author_to_submit(Ls, R),
    S =.. [submit | R].

only_allow_author_to_submit(S, S) :-
    gerrit:commit_author(Id),
    gerrit:current_user(Id),
    !.

only_allow_author_to_submit(S1, [label('Only-Author-Can-Submit', need(_)) | S1]).

Example 16: Make change submittable if all comments have been resolved

In this example we will use the unresolved_comments_count fact about a change. Our goal is to block the submission of any change with some unresolved comments. Basically, it can be achieved by the following rules:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(R)) :-
    gerrit:unresolved_comments_count(0),
    !,
    gerrit:commit_author(A),
    R = label('All-Comments-Resolved', ok(A)).

submit_rule(submit(R)) :-
    gerrit:unresolved_comments_count(U),
    U > 0,
    R = label('All-Comments-Resolved', need(_)).

Suppose currently a change is submittable if it gets +2 for Code-Review and +1 for Verified. It can be extended to support the above rules as follows:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(CR, V, R)) :-
    base(CR, V),
    gerrit:unresolved_comments_count(0),
    !,
    gerrit:commit_author(A),
    R = label('All-Comments-Resolved', ok(A)).

submit_rule(submit(CR, V, R)) :-
    base(CR, V),
    gerrit:unresolved_comments_count(U),
    U > 0,
    R = label('All-Comments-Resolved', need(_)).

base(CR, V) :-
    gerrit:max_with_block(-2, 2, 'Code-Review', CR),
    gerrit:max_with_block(-1, 1, 'Verified', V).

Note that a new label as All-Comments-Resolved should not be configured. It’s only used to show 'Needs All-Comments-Resolved' in the UI to clearly indicate to the user that all the comments have to be resolved for the change to become submittable.

Example 17: Make change submittable if it is a pure revert

In this example we will use the pure_revert fact about a change. Our goal is to block the submission of any change that is not a pure revert. Basically, it can be achieved by the following rules:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(R)) :-
    gerrit:pure_revert(1),
    !,
    gerrit:commit_author(A),
    R = label('Is-Pure-Revert', ok(A)).

submit_rule(submit(R)) :-
    gerrit:pure_revert(U),
    U /= 1,
    R = label('Is-Pure-Revert', need(_)).

Suppose currently a change is submittable if it gets +2 for Code-Review and +1 for Verified. It can be extended to support the above rules as follows:

rules.pl

submit_rule(submit(CR, V, R)) :-
    base(CR, V),
    gerrit:pure_revert(1),
    !,
    gerrit:commit_author(A),
    R = label('Is-Pure-Revert', ok(A)).

submit_rule(submit(CR, V, R)) :-
    base(CR, V),
    gerrit:pure_revert(U),
    U /= 1,
    R = label('Is-Pure-Revert', need(_)).

base(CR, V) :-
    gerrit:max_with_block(-2, 2, 'Code-Review', CR),
    gerrit:max_with_block(-1, 1, 'Verified', V).

Note that a new label as Is-Pure-Revert should not be configured. It’s only used to show 'Needs Is-Pure-Revert' in the UI to clearly indicate to the user that the change has to be a pure revert in order to become submittable.

Examples - Submit Type

The following examples show how to implement own submit type rules.

Example 1: Set a Cherry Pick submit type for all changes

This example sets the Cherry Pick submit type for all changes. It overrides whatever is set as project default submit type.

rules.pl

submit_type(cherry_pick).

Example 2: Fast Forward Only for all refs/heads/stable* branches

For all refs/heads/stable* branches we would like to enforce the Fast Forward Only submit type. A reason for this decision may be a need to never break the build in the stable branches. For all other branches, those not matching the refs/heads/stable* pattern, we would like to use the project’s default submit type as defined on the project settings page.

rules.pl

submit_type(fast_forward_only) :-
    gerrit:change_branch(B), regex_matches('refs/heads/stable.*', B),
    !.
submit_type(T) :- gerrit:project_default_submit_type(T).

The first submit_type predicate defines the Fast Forward Only submit type for refs/heads/stable.* branches. The second submit_type predicate returns the project’s default submit type.

Part of Gerrit Code Review