create-pull-request/docs/default-pr-title-body.md

Default PR Title and Body from Commit Message

When creating a pull request with a single commit, the action will automatically default the PR title and body to match the commit message, similar to how GitHub's web interface behaves.

Behavior

Single Commit PRs

When the following conditions are met:

• The pull request branch contains exactly one commit
• The title input is not provided (uses default value)
• The body input is not provided (uses default value)

The action will:

• Use the commit's subject line as the PR title
• Use the commit's body as the PR description (if the commit has a body)

Example

Given a commit with this message:

Update AGP sources to the latest

_Auto-generated by `dump-sources` Github workflow._

The following workflow configuration:

- uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v7
  with:
    commit-message: |
      Update AGP sources to the latest

      _Auto-generated by `dump-sources` Github workflow._
    branch: actions/dump-sources
    delete-branch: true

Will create a pull request with:

• Title: Update AGP sources to the latest
• Body: _Auto-generated by dump-sources Github workflow._

Multiple Commits

When the pull request branch contains multiple commits, the action will use the default values:

• Title: Changes by create-pull-request action
• Body: Automated changes by [create-pull-request](https://github.com/peter-evans/create-pull-request) GitHub action

Custom Title and Body

If you explicitly provide title or body inputs, those values will always be used regardless of the number of commits:

- uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v7
  with:
    commit-message: |
      Update AGP sources to the latest

      _Auto-generated by `dump-sources` Github workflow._
    title: Custom PR Title
    body: Custom PR Description
    branch: actions/dump-sources

This will create a PR with your custom title and body, ignoring the commit message.

Benefits

This feature eliminates the need to duplicate commit messages in the workflow configuration:

Before (Duplicated Content)

- uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v7
  with:
    commit-message: |
      Update AGP sources to the latest

      _Auto-generated by `dump-sources` Github workflow._
    title: Update AGP sources to the latest
    body: _Auto-generated by `dump-sources` Github workflow._
    branch: actions/dump-sources

After (Simplified)

- uses: peter-evans/create-pull-request@v7
  with:
    commit-message: |
      Update AGP sources to the latest

      _Auto-generated by `dump-sources` Github workflow._
    branch: actions/dump-sources

Edge Cases

Commit with Empty Body

If a commit has only a subject line (no body), the PR will use:

• Title: The commit subject
• Body: The default body text

Example commit:

Update files

Results in:

• Title: Update files
• Body: Automated changes by [create-pull-request](https://github.com/peter-evans/create-pull-request) GitHub action

Commit with Multi-line Body

Multi-line commit bodies are fully preserved in the PR description:

Example commit:

Update documentation

This is a detailed commit message.

It has multiple paragraphs.

- Item 1
- Item 2

Results in a PR with the full multi-line body as the description.