aliases

Reviewer aliases can be defined at the root of the CODEREVIEW.toml file. These aliases can be used anywhere a list of strings is expected, such as reviewers, alternates, authors, cc, or labels.

To reference an alias, use the $ prefix.

[aliases]
devs = ["dev1", "dev2", "dev3", "dev4"]

[[scopes]]
name = "app"
reviewers = ["$devs"]

Nested aliases

Aliases can reference other aliases, allowing you to build complex reviewer groups:

[aliases]
backend = ["alice", "bob"]
frontend = ["carol", "dave"]
qa = ["eve"]
all_devs = ["$backend", "$frontend"]
everyone = ["$all_devs", "$qa", "frank"]

[[scopes]]
name = "app"
reviewers = ["$everyone"]
# Expands to: ["alice", "bob", "carol", "dave", "eve", "frank"]

PullApprove will raise an error if it detects circular references in aliases (e.g., if alias A references B, and B references A). It also raises an error if a $alias reference has no matching definition, so a typo surfaces loudly instead of silently dropping the reviewer or path. These checks help catch configuration mistakes early.

To manage aliases at scale across your organization, you can make use of templates to sync the same aliases to multiple repos.

FAQs

What about GitHub Teams?

If a reviewer group already exists as a GitHub Team or GitLab group, you can reference it directly with the @ prefix instead of maintaining an alias — see teams. Aliases are for review-specific groupings that don't correspond to a real team, or when you want the membership visible in the config itself.

The term aliases was inspired by Kubernetes OWNERS, which uses the same concept.