GitLab Merge Request from the CLI

 Posted on 2021-05-06  (Last modified on 2024-03-12)

The Problem

You want to push a branch to GitLab and automatically create a Merge Request (MR) for it.

There are effectively three scenarios this can cover:

• Create a MR in draft state with a custom title
• Create a MR
• Create a MR and automatically merge if CI/CD pipeline succeeds

Manually this is quite the process:

• Push branch to origin
• Copy link to create a MR
• Open the link, change fields to represent wanted state and submit

The Solution

GitLab offers push options¹ that allow us to instruct it to do more than just plain git push.

• For example we can create a MR directly while pushing:

  git push
  --set-upstream origin HEAD
  -o merge_request.create
  -o merge_request.title="Awesome feature"
  

• Or set it to be a draft:

  git push
  --set-upstream origin HEAD
  -o merge_request.create
  -o merge_request.title="Draft: Awesome feature"
  

• Or even auto-merge after the CI/CD pipeline succeeds

  git push
  --set-upstream origin HEAD
  -o merge_request.create
  -o merge_request.title="Awesome feature"
  -o merge_request.merge_when_pipeline_succeeds
  

The Helper Scripts

For PowerShell I created a simple function to abstract this away.

Assume we are on a new branch and want to create a MR for it:

# As a draft
PS> mr "Awesome feature" -Draft

# Auto-Merging on CI/CD success
PS> mr "Awesome feature" -AutoMerge

# Just a plain old MR
PS> mr "Awesome feature" -Draft

Since I sometimes need to work with Bash too there are functions doing the same thing for it.

Under the same assumptions as above it looks like this:

# As a draft
$ dmr "Awesome Feature"

# Auto-Merging on CI/CD success
PS> mrmp "Awesome feature"

# Just a plain old MR
PS> mr "Awesome feature"