Publish your changes
Publishing sends everything saved on your branch as one pull request. The repository's review rules on GitHub decide when it merges.
Before you begin
You can publish once your branch has saved changes, no validation errors and no unresolved conflicts with the main branch. The Publish page says which of these is missing.
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Open Publish.
What publishing needs lists what the main branch requires before a change can merge, read from its branch protection and rulesets on GitHub: a number of approving reviews, a review from a code owner, or checks that must pass. Your changes lists the files on your branch.
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Choose Publish, or Update and publish when your
pull request is already open.
The editor opens a pull request for your branch, or updates the open one. If nothing blocks the merge, it merges at once and says Published: your changes are merged and will go live after the build. Otherwise the pull request stays open, and the page lists who approved it, its checks, and what still blocks the merge.
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When reviewers approve and the checks pass, choose Update and publish
again.
A maintainer can also merge the pull request on GitHub.
Results
What can block the merge, and what to do:
| The page says | What to do |
|---|---|
| Needs approving reviews, or a review from a code owner | Wait for reviewers on GitHub, then publish again. |
| A required check failed or has not passed yet | Wait for it to finish. If it failed, open the pull request to see why, fix it in the editor and save. |
| Changes requested | Keep editing on your branch: each save updates the pull request. Publish again when you are done. |
| The pull request has conflicts with the base branch | Open any page in the editor to merge the main branch in, and resolve the conflicts. |
| GitHub does not let the editor read the rules, or the rules could not be read | The editor cannot tell whether the merge is allowed, so it never merges by itself. A maintainer merges the pull request on GitHub. |
What to do next
After the merge, your working branch is retired, and your next save starts a new one. The docs site builds the merged commit like any push, and it goes live once the build passes. The commit on the main branch credits you as co-author.