Status checks are based on external processes, such as continuous integration builds, which run for each push you make to a repository. You can see the pending, passing, or failing state of status checks next to individual commits in your pull request.
Anyone with write permissions to a repository can set the state for any status check in the repository.
You can see the overall state of the last commit to a branch on your repository's branches page or in your repository's list of pull requests.
If status checks are required for a repository, the required status checks must pass before you can merge your branch into the protected branch. For more information, see "About protected branches."
Note: A job that is skipped will report its status as "Success". It will not prevent a pull request from merging, even if it is a required check.
Types of status checks on GitHub
There are two types of status checks on GitHub:
- Checks
- Commit statuses
Checks are different from commit statuses in that they provide line annotations, more detailed messaging, and are only available for use with GitHub Apps.
Note: GitHub Actions generates checks, not commit statuses, when workflows are run.
Organization owners and users with push access to a repository can create checks and commit statuses with GitHub's API. For more information, see "REST API endpoints for checks" and "REST API endpoints for commit statuses."
Checks
When checks are set up in a repository, pull requests have a Checks tab where you can view detailed build output from checks and rerun failed checks.
Note: The Checks tab only gets populated for pull requests if you set up checks, not commit statuses, for the repository.
When a specific line in a commit causes a check to fail, you will see details about the failure, warning, or notice next to the relevant code in the Files tab of the pull request.
You can navigate between the checks summaries for various commits in a pull request, using the commit drop-down menu under the Checks tab.
Skipping and requesting checks for individual commits
When a repository is set to automatically request checks for pushes, you can choose to skip checks for an individual commit you push. When a repository is not set to automatically request checks for pushes, you can request checks for an individual commit you push. For more information on these settings, see "REST API endpoints for check suites."
You can also skip workflow runs triggered by the push and pull_request events by including a command in your commit message. For more information, see "Skipping workflow runs"
Alternatively, to skip or request all checks for your commit, add one of the following trailer lines to the end of your commit message:
-
To skip checks for a commit, type your commit message and a short, meaningful description of your changes. After your commit description, before the closing quotation, add two empty lines followed by
skip-checks: true:$ git commit -m "Update README > > skip-checks: true" -
To request checks for a commit, type your commit message and a short, meaningful description of your changes. After your commit description, before the closing quotation, add two empty lines followed by
request-checks: true:$ git commit -m "Refactor usability tests > > request-checks: true"
By default, Git automatically removes consecutive newlines. To leave the commit message exactly as you entered it, use the --cleanup=verbatim option on your commit. For more information, see --cleanup=<mode> in the Git documentation.
Retention of checks
GitHub retains checks data for 400 days. After 400 days, the data is archived. 10 days after archival, the data is permanently deleted.
To merge a pull request with checks that are both required and archived, you must rerun the checks.