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Prior Art / Alternatives

If Kodiak doesn't suit your current needs, there are plenty of implementations of pull request (PR) automation and efficent branch updating and merging.

Name	Auto Merging	Auto Update Branches	Update Branches Efficiently	Works With Branch Protection	Works with Forks	Simple Configuration	Open Source	Hosted SaaS	Free for public and personal repositories	Language
Kodiak	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	Python
Bors	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Python
Homu	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Python
Shipit	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Ruby
Gullintanni	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Elixir
Popuko	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Go
Bors-ng	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Elixir
Marge-bot	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Python
Bulldozer	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	Go
Mergify	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	Python
Autorebase	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	TypeScript
Auto Merge	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	JavaScript
Merge when green	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	JavaScript
GitHub's auto-merge	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	🤷‍
Ranger ‍	✅	❌ ‍	❌ ‍	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	🤷‍

Explanations

Auto Merging

• automatically merges PR once up to date with master and all required statuses and checks pass

Auto Update Branches

• ensures branches are automatically updated to the latest version of master

Update Branches Efficiently

• an improvement upon Auto Update Branches where branches are only updated when necessary, as opposed to updating all branches any time their target branch (usually master) updates

Works With Branch Protection

• PR mergeability is determined by GitHub Branch Protection settings and app configuration
• doesn't require changing continuous integration (CI) tools
• doesn't create separate test branches for merging that would circumvent the GitHub PR workflow

Works with Forks

• will update and merge pull requests made from repositories forks. This is a necessary for an open source project to accept changes from external contributors.

Simple Configuration

• configuration has sane defaults and requires minimal effort from the user. Kodiak's configuration is a simple TOML file with only one required configuration option.

# .kodiak.toml
version = 1

Open Source

• documentation and resources necessary to self host the application are publically available.

Hosted SaaS

• a publically hosted version of the application is available for users to install.

Free for public and personal repositories

• hosted version is free for all public repositories and Personal repositories. Kodiak only charges for use with private Organization repositories.

Resources

• For a list of Kodiak's features see the "Features" page.
• Check out the "Recipes" page for configuration examples.