Because I'm auto-assigned as a reviewer on logical def tickets, I am not allowed to make logical def changes

[cmungall]

In #2020 I insisted that I review logical def changes that did not match a pattern. The pattern matching part was hard, so an action was created

https://github.com/obophenotype/uberon/blob/master/.github/workflows/reviewers.yml

That assigns me as a reviewer. The problem is, github forbids reviewing your own PRs, so this effectively blocks me (or an agent acting on my behalf) from making any changes to logical definitions

(maybe this was the intentions 😄 )

See for example: #3538

[gouttegd]

The reason you were blocked from merging #3538 has nothing to do with the GitHub Action that checks changes to logical definitions. It is simply because: (1) Uberon is configured to require at least one approval before a PR can be merged, and (2) you cannot approve a PR that you have opened yourself – I think this is a GitHub-wide policy that we have no control on (and of course, whether the PR was created by you personally or by an agent using your account is irrelevant, from GitHub’s point of view).

This would have happened even without the reviewers.yml action. Note for example that you are also blocked from approving the other PRs your agent created tonight, even those that did not touch a logical definition and therefore did not trigger that action (e.g. #3540).

Now that @dosumis has approved #3538, the PR can be merged, regardless of the failed status of the reviewers.yml action.

(There is indeed a problem with the reviewers.yml action in that context, though: when it detects a changed logical definition, it tries to assign you as a reviewer, and this causes the action to fail because the PR author cannot be assigned as a reviewer – again, GitHub-wide policy. I guess we could add a preliminary step in that action to stop it early if the PR author is yourself¹. But again, this failure is not what blocks you; in Uberon we do not require that all checks must pass before a PR can be merged. So even if we update the action to stop it early on your PRs, you will still be blocked from auto-approving your PR and thus you will still be blocked from merging them until someone else approves them.)

In short, there’s nothing much we can do here. About the only thing we could do is to remove the requirement that a PR must be approved by at least one reviewer before it can be merged, and I am very reluctant to do that.

Could your agent run under a different account than your own? That would be a much better solution IMHO.

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¹ Though the future plans for that action are rather to change it completely to provide the authors with some feedback about the impact of their changes (something like, “the updated logical definition would cause the following n terms to fall under that class”), to get them to think twice before changing a logical definition, rather than systematically ask you for a review. When I will have the time do that is anyone’s guess. ^^'

[gouttegd]

What I am not sure I understand is why you can’t bypass the rule that a PR must be approved. As an admin you should be able to do that.

[gouttegd]

Could your agent run under a different account than your own?

This is now the case apparently, so we can close here.