Handle failed pull requests
Understanding failures
When a PR fails in the merge queue, it's automatically removed so it doesn't block other PRs. Understanding why it failed helps you fix it quickly.
Why PRs fail in the queue
Legitimate test failures (most common):
Tests fail because your code has a bug
Tests fail due to conflicts with recently merged changes
Tests fail because of missing or incorrect changes
Integration tests reveal issues not caught locally
Flaky tests:
Tests fail randomly, pass on retry
Timing issues, race conditions, or external dependencies
Network timeouts or resource contention
See Anti-flake protection to handle these automatically
GitHub/CI infrastructure issues:
GitHub API errors or rate limits
CI runner out of resources or crashed
Network connectivity problems
Temporary infrastructure failures
Configuration problems:
Branch protection rules misconfigured
Required status checks not running
Trunk unable to create test branches
Missing CI configuration
Merge conflicts:
Another PR merged and created conflicts
Your branch needs to be rebased
Files were moved or renamed
Manually restarting failed pull requests
The PR Details panel has a dropdown "Actions" menu, where you can:
Restart tests. Use this to manually restart testing of this PR.
Remove from queue. If the PR is "Queued", then it will cancel it, preventing it from going into the queue until it is re-queued. If the PR is currently in the queue, it will be removed from the queue, which will restart all PRs that depended on it.
Trunk Merge Queue will automatically restart failed PRs when it can under certain conditions (see PR states). Since the restart is usually from a failed PR being removed from the queue, other PRs behind it will also be restarted. If you want to manually restart a PR, you can restart it in place by clicking the Details link in the Failures summary screen to open the merge details screen. Then, click thee Actions dropdown, and select Restart
There are a couple of reasons you might want to manually retry a PR. First, if a PR ends up in the PENDING_FAILURE state because of something transient like a CI runner disconnecting or flakey tests, you can retry the PR right away instead of waiting for PRs in front of it to pass or fail.
Another reason to restart a PR is if the proper tests don't get kicked off due to a failure in the CI system. For example, if GitHub has an outage and is not triggering workflows or actions properly.
Failures
A tabulated view of all the items that have failed in the Merge Queue, e.g. due to testing.
Retry failed pull requests
When a PR has been dropped from the queue, you can manually retry the PR by clicking the Details link in the Failures summary screen to open the merge details screen. Then, click thee Actions dropdown, and select Retry
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