gh pr create should detect and update already existing pull requests #5792

ssbarnea · 2022-06-11T10:23:42Z

ssbarnea
Jun 11, 2022

At this moment if you run gh pr create twice, it will attempt to create a new pull request, even if one already existing.

It would be much better if gh pr create will instead update a pull request if already existing and outdated, aka by running git push.

gh is already able to detect existing pr as we can see by running a command like gh pr ready.

Having a default create-or-update would enable us to use gh more ways (including scripting!) and increase productivity.

This would make the command a little bit more idempotent, as it will ensure that a PR is active and updated at the end.

mislav · 2022-06-13T15:17:23Z

mislav
Jun 13, 2022

Hi, thanks for the suggestion!

Currently, running gh pr create on a branch that already has a PR will error out with a descriptive message:

$ gh pr create
a pull request for branch "<head>" into branch "<base>" already exists:
https://github.com/OWNER/REPO/pull/NUMBER

I believe that this is enough to give you a hint that a PR already exists and that, in most cases, you can just do a git push to update the associated PR.

I'm not sure if gh pr create should effectively do an "upsert" since that behavior could be surprising.

0 replies

kov · 2022-10-28T11:15:47Z

kov
Oct 28, 2022

How about a flag? I have an action that creates a PR automatically from an issue, and the branch is named after the issue. I imagine this is a very common use case, so not having to write the code to check that the PR exists and conditionally creating it would be good to have.

4 replies

kov Oct 28, 2022

To make this a bit more concrete, this is what I ended up with in my action. Not in love with it:

gh pr edit ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }} -b '${{ env.PR_BODY }}' -t '${{ env.PR_TITLE }}' && gh pr reopen ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }} || gh pr create --fill -B main -H ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }}

kov/iocost-benchmarks@45abc4e

mislav Oct 28, 2022

@kov Thanks for sharing your workaround. The code looks simple enough and good to me. I still believe such approach belongs in your own action rather than gh core.

whitgroves Nov 3, 2023

@kov thanks for sharing.

For the next person searching, here's a slightly shorter variant if you don't care about the PR text:
gh pr view ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }} && gh pr reopen ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }} || gh pr create --fill -B main -H ${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }}

zwass Jul 1, 2026

The parentheses seem misplaced in the above examples. They will fail the gh pr edit or gh pr view and then not try any other commands. I used the following:

(gh pr edit 'release-${{ github.event.inputs.version }}' -b '${{ env.PR_BODY }}' -t '${{ env.PR_TITLE }}' && gh pr reopen '${{ env.BRANCH_NAME }}') || gh pr create --base main --fill --head 'release-${{ github.event.inputs.version }}'

juniobiel · 2024-01-25T19:10:24Z

juniobiel
Jan 25, 2024

Hey guys.
I was using an Github Action to make PR, but the action that I was using is archived now.
So, the maintainer of the repo Pull-request Action, put on README an instruction that can solve this question.
So, I put this at my actions.

      # Create pull request
      - name: pull-request
        run: |
          gh pr create -B develop --title "Merge ${{ github.ref_name }} into develop" --body 'Created by Github action' || gh pr edit -B develop --title "Merge ${{ github.ref_name }} into develop" --body 'Created by Github action'
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GIT_TOKEN }}

And It's works.

0 replies

freesh · 2024-04-12T19:44:51Z

freesh
Apr 12, 2024

I have to create multible prs. But these Workarounds just working with one pr. I have feature1 -> main, feature1 -> staging and feature1 -> develop.

I think a flag might be the cleaner solution. A flag that overwrites the existing pr instead sending an error.

0 replies

GMartinez-Sisti · 2024-08-21T16:18:27Z

GMartinez-Sisti
Aug 21, 2024

The examples above are not validating the error, if there is an issue with a parameter value or the github token, the script will just blindly try the "or" command.

In case it helps anyone, I'm doing it like this:

PR_URL="$(gh pr list --head "${BRANCH_NAME}" --state open --json url --jq .[].url)"
if [[ -n "${PR_URL}" ]]; then
    echo "PR already exists -> ${PR_URL}"
    exit 0
else
    gh pr create ...
fi

0 replies

kkafar · 2025-06-12T13:44:27Z

kkafar
Jun 12, 2025

I want to give you another use case for which this feature ☝🏻 would be really useful.

I'm using gh pr create -t ... --fill-verbose pretty often & it sometimes happen, that after I create a PR, I push some more commits. Sometimes to do something I've forgotten about or in reaction to a review. However, I'm not aware of way to autogenerate the PR description again - and it would be great to be able to do so.

1 reply

Jeffrin-dev Apr 12, 2026

For the auto-generated description part — I ran into the same thing. I built a GitHub App called PRDraft that generates the PR description from the diff when you open the PR. It won't regenerate on every push but it at least handles the initial description automatically so you're not starting from scratch. https://github.com/apps/prdraft

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gh pr create should detect and update already existing pull requests #5792

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