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CI Context and Pull-Request Comparisons

Every Testream reporter and the CLI add available branch, commit, repository, and build details to a test run. This keeps your CI evidence connected to the code and pipeline that produced it.

For pull requests, Testream also uses the branch's merge base when it is available. That lets Testream compare the run with the matching main or master baseline rather than an unrelated newer run.

GitHub Actions setup​

Keep the checkout history available in pull-request workflows:

.github/workflows/tests.yml
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0

Testream reads the CI context supplied by supported providers, including GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure Pipelines, Bitbucket Pipelines, CircleCI, and Jenkins. It never fetches additional Git history itself.

When a merge base is unavailable​

Your upload is not blocked. Testream uses the best available earlier trunk run based on when the tests executed. If no suitable baseline exists yet, the run remains available and Testream shows that a comparison baseline is not available.

This means shallow checkouts, non-pull-request runs, and older runs continue to work normally; they may simply have less precise pull-request comparison context.

Advanced CI setup​

If your CI system already knows the exact merge-base commit, set TESTREAM_MERGE_BASE_SHA in the environment for the test or upload step. This is optional—GitLab merge-request metadata and supported provider context are detected automatically.

TESTREAM_MERGE_BASE_SHA="$BASE_SHA" npx @testream/cli \
  --report-path ctrf/ctrf-report.json \
  --test-tool playwright \
  --api-key "$TESTREAM_API_KEY"

For custom CI systems, set TESTREAM_BASE_BRANCH when the target branch already exists in the checkout.

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