Wildcard patterns in repository rulesets not matching GitHub Actions status checks

[mayank-khullar]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Other

Discussion Details

I'm trying to use wildcard patterns (e.g., preview*) in repository rulesets to match multiple GitHub Actions status checks.
However, the wildcard pattern is not matching any checks in the PR checks section

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a ruleset with required status check using wildcard pattern:
   - Context: preview*
2. Create a PR that triggers a GitHub Actions workflow with multiple jobs:
   - Job IDs: preview_admin, preview_dev, preview_staging, preview_prod
   - These jobs report status in format: {job_id} / {Job Name}
   - Example: preview_admin / Infra Preview admin
3. Observe the behavior:
   - Ruleset shows preview* as "Expected — Waiting for status to be reported"
   - Pattern never matches the running checks
   - PR remains blocked

Expected Behavior

The wildcard pattern preview* should match all status checks with job IDs starting with "preview":

• preview_admin / Infra Preview admin ✓
• preview_dev / Infra Preview dev ✓
• preview_staging / Infra Preview staging ✓
• preview_prod / Infra Preview prod ✓

[bybardia]

From what you've described, it sounds like rulesets may not support wildcard matching for required status checks in the way you're expecting.

The required check usually needs to match the exact check name being reported. If the actual checks are reported as:

• preview_admin / Infra Preview admin
• preview_dev / Infra Preview dev
• preview_staging / Infra Preview staging
• preview_prod / Infra Preview prod

then a pattern like preview* may never resolve to those checks, which would explain why it remains in the "Expected — Waiting for status to be reported" state.

As a workaround, you may need to either:

• Add each required check explicitly, or
• Use a single aggregate job that depends on all preview jobs and require only that check in the ruleset.

Can anyone confirm whether wildcard matching is currently supported for required status checks in repository rulesets?

[HarolTorrado73]

Based on the behavior you described, it sounds like repository rulesets may not support wildcard matching for GitHub Actions status check contexts in the way we might expect.

A few things worth checking:

1. Verify the exact status check names being reported on the pull request. GitHub usually matches the full check run name rather than only the job ID.
2. Confirm whether the ruleset is expecting the complete context string (for example: preview_admin / Infra Preview admin) instead of a prefix pattern such as preview*.
3. Try adding one of the generated checks explicitly and see if it is recognized by the ruleset.
4. Check whether the status is being reported as a Check Run or a Status Context, since rulesets can behave differently depending on how the workflow reports results.

If explicit check names work but wildcard patterns do not, this may indicate a current limitation or bug in ruleset pattern matching.

Could you share a screenshot of the exact status checks shown in the pull request and the ruleset configuration?

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[fletchapin]

Could we re-open this discussion? I consider this a bug, as all the GH documentation that I've found simply says it is an exact string match on the name field, which is very different from the name + random matrix parameters. You should be able to change the matrix without needing to update status checks. For example, when Python 3.10 is deprecated it will make sense to remove it from the matrix of status checks without changing any tests.

It's entirely illogical that this would require me to update my status checks or else my CI/CD pipeline will break.