Skip to content

Help

Merge requests

Merge requests allow you to exchange changes you made to source code and collaborate with other people on the same project.

Authorization for merge requests

There are two main ways to have a merge request flow with GitLab:

  1. Working with protected branches in a single repository
  2. Working with forks of an authoritative project

Learn more about the authorization for merge requests.

Cherry-pick changes

Cherry-pick any commit in the UI by simply clicking the Cherry-pick button in a merged merge requests or a commit.

Learn more about cherry-picking changes.

Merge when pipeline succeeds

When reviewing a merge request that looks ready to merge but still has one or more CI jobs running, you can set it to be merged automatically when CI pipeline succeeds. This way, you don't have to wait for the pipeline to finish and remember to merge the request manually.

Learn more about merging when pipeline succeeds.

Resolve discussion comments in merge requests reviews

Keep track of the progress during a code review with resolving comments. Resolving comments prevents you from forgetting to address feedback and lets you hide discussions that are no longer relevant.

Read more about resolving discussion comments in merge requests reviews.

Squash and merge

GitLab allows you to squash all changes present in a merge request into a single commit when merging, to allow for a neater commit history.

Learn more about squash and merge.

Resolve conflicts

When a merge request has conflicts, GitLab may provide the option to resolve those conflicts in the GitLab UI.

Learn more about resolving merge conflicts in the UI.

Revert changes

GitLab implements Git's powerful feature to revert any commit with introducing a Revert button in merge requests and commit details.

Learn more about reverting changes in the UI

Merge requests versions

Every time you push to a branch that is tied to a merge request, a new version of merge request diff is created. When you visit a merge request that contains more than one pushes, you can select and compare the versions of those merge request diffs.

Read more about the merge requests versions.

Work In Progress merge requests

To prevent merge requests from accidentally being accepted before they're completely ready, GitLab blocks the "Accept" button for merge requests that have been marked as a Work In Progress.

Learn more about settings a merge request as "Work In Progress".

Merge request approvals

Included in GitLab Enterprise Edition Starter.

If you want to make sure every merge request is approved by one or more people, you can enforce this workflow by using merge request approvals. Merge request approvals allow you to set the number of necessary approvals and predefine a list of approvers that will need to approve every merge request in a project.

Read more about merge request approvals.

Semi-linear history merge requests

Included in GitLab Enterprise Edition Starter.

A merge commit is created for every merge, but the branch is only merged if a fast-forward merge is possible. This ensures that if the merge request build suceedeed, the target branch build will also succeed after merging.

Navigate to a project's settings, select the Merge commit with semi-linear history option under Merge Requests: Merge method and save your changes.

Fast-forward merge requests

Included in GitLab Enterprise Edition Starter.

If you prefer a linear Git history and a way to accept merge requests without creating merge commits, you can configure this on a per-project basis.

Read more about fast-forward merge requests.

Ignore whitespace changes in Merge Request diff view

If you click the Hide whitespace changes button, you can see the diff without whitespace changes (if there are any). This is also working when on a specific commit page.

MR diff

Tip: You can append ?w=1 while on the diffs page of a merge request to ignore any whitespace changes.

Tips

Here are some tips that will help you be more efficient with merge requests in the command line.

Note: This section might move in its own document in the future.

Checkout merge requests locally

A merge request contains all the history from a repository, plus the additional commits added to the branch associated with the merge request. Here's a few tricks to checkout a merge request locally.

Please note that you can checkout a merge request locally even if the source project is a fork (even a private fork) of the target project.

Checkout locally by adding a git alias

Add the following alias to your ~/.gitconfig:

[alias]
    mr = !sh -c 'git fetch $1 merge-requests/$2/head:mr-$1-$2 && git checkout mr-$1-$2' -

Now you can check out a particular merge request from any repository and any remote. For example, to check out the merge request with ID 5 as shown in GitLab from the upstream remote, do:

git mr upstream 5

This will fetch the merge request into a local mr-upstream-5 branch and check it out.

Checkout locally by modifying .git/config for a given repository

Locate the section for your GitLab remote in the .git/config file. It looks like this:

[remote "origin"]
  url = https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce.git
  fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

You can open the file with:

git config -e

Now add the following line to the above section:

fetch = +refs/merge-requests/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/merge-requests/*

In the end, it should look like this:

[remote "origin"]
  url = https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce.git
  fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
  fetch = +refs/merge-requests/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/merge-requests/*

Now you can fetch all the merge requests:

git fetch origin

...
From https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce.git
 * [new ref]         refs/merge-requests/1/head -> origin/merge-requests/1
 * [new ref]         refs/merge-requests/2/head -> origin/merge-requests/2
...

And to check out a particular merge request:

git checkout origin/merge-requests/1