Open GitLab Merge Requests automatically

This script is meant to be used in GitLab CI to automatically open Merge Requests for feature branches, if there is none yet.

The script is provided as dedicated docker image to improve maintainability in the future.

It is based on the script and idea of Riccardo Padovani, which he introduced with his blog post How to automatically create new MR on Gitlab with Gitlab CI. Thanks for providing this.

How it works

• Push a commit on a new branch to trigger pipeline, following git flow. Its recommended to run in expected branch names only.
• The job creates a merge request for the branch if it doesn't exist already.
• Branches prefixed with feature/ or fix/ will target the project's default branch in merge request.
• Branches prefixed with release will target the master branch.

Instructions

1) GITLAB_PRIVATE_TOKEN

Set a secret variable in your GitLab project with your private token. Name it GITLAB_PRIVATE_TOKEN. This is necessary to raise the Merge Request on your behalf.

2) .gitlab-ci.yml

Add the following to your .gitlab-ci.yml file:

stages:
  - openMr
  - otherStages

Open Merge Request:
  image: boy51/gitlab-auto-merge-request:stable
  before_script: [] # We do not need any setup work, let's remove the global one (if any)
  variables:
    GIT_STRATEGY: none # We do not need a clone of the GIT repository to create a Merge Request
  stage: openMr
  only:
    - /^feature\/*/
    - /^fix\/*/
    - /^hotfix\/*/
    - /^release\/*/
  script:
    - merge-request.sh # The name of the script

You can see this in action at .gitlab-ci.yml of this project.

You can run the script merge-request-post-deploy.sh in a similar fashion. This script is meant to run on your master branch to create a merge request from master targeting develop.

Docker images

The images are hosted on Docker Hub.

Two tags are noteworthy:

• latest: Latest release on master branch of this project
• 1: Latest stable release of 1.x version (see note on Semantic Versioning below)

This project is managed on GitLab

The GitHub project is only a mirror of the GitLab project.

Please open Issues and Merge Requests at the GitLab project.

Versioning

This project follows Semantic Versioning. Following are defined as APIs according to the spec:

• How to call this script from .gitlab-ci.yml
• Required Environment Variables

Following are not considered as API according to the spec:

• Dockerfile and base image used

Authors

• Some stuff: Richard Goedel
• Docker part: Tobias L. Maier
• Script and idea: Riccardo Padovani