To keep pull requests consistent and to help ensure quality across the project, pull request templates are essential. Pull request templates can be used in any solution that can interpret markdown.
In order to use a specific pull request template in GitHub, you must include the specific template in your URL. For example: if you want to use bug-template-md, you need to use query parameters when you open the PR, https://github.com/[USERNAME OR ORG NAME]/[REPO NAME]/compare/master...[BRANCH NAME]?expand=1&template=bug-template.md. If you want to have a default template so you do not have to always specify the template in the URL make sure you have PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md in the root of your .github folder. Example below:
- /.github
- /PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE
- bug-template.md
- feature-template.md
- PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
...
It is also worth noting that the rendering of markdown is different between Azure DevOps and GitHub. Checkout the GitHub Documentation for more information.
Within Azure DevOps you can have multiple pull request templates and you select which one to use from the dropdown in the pull request screen. To use pull request templates create a folder in the root of your repo called .azuredevops. The default will be whatever you specific within pull_request_template.md.
It is worth noting that though technically you can put your templates in docs or .vsts it is cleaner to put it in the .azuredevops folder so that if you port your code over to GitHub at some point there isn't collision since there are formatting nuances between the two platforms.
- /.azuredevops
- pull_request_template.md
- bug-request.md
- feature-request.md
The example template below is generic and can be used for either features or bugs. If the team prefers, in their repository, this example can be altered, or it can be split into separate Pull Request Types per the documentation above.