Merge request approvals (STARTER)

Introduced in GitLab Enterprise Edition 7.12.

Merge request approvals enable enforced code review by requiring specified people to approve a merge request before it can be unblocked for merging.

Use cases

1. Enforcing review of all code that gets merged into a repository.
2. Specifying code maintainers for an entire repository.
3. Specifying reviewers for a given proposed code change.
4. Specifying categories of reviewers, such as BE, FE, QA, DB, etc., for all proposed code changes.

Enabling the new approvals interface

NOTE: Note: Prior to 12.0, if you are running a self-managed instance, the new interface shown on this page will not be available unless the feature flag approval_rules is enabled, which can be done from the Rails console by instance administrators.

Use these commands to start the Rails console:

# Omnibus GitLab
gitlab-rails console

# Installation from source
cd /home/git/gitlab
sudo -u git -H bin/rails console RAILS_ENV=production

Then run Feature.enable(:approval_rules) to enable the feature flag.

Editing approvals

To edit the merge request approvals:

1. Navigate to your project's Settings > General and expand Merge request approvals.

   

2. Click Edit.

3. Search for users or groups that will be eligible to approve merge requests and click the Add button to add them as approvers. Note: selecting approvers is optional.

4. Set the minimum number of required approvals under the No. approvals required box. Note: the minimum can be 0.

5. Click Update approvers.

   

The steps above are the minimum required to get approvals working in your merge requests, but there are a couple more options available that might be suitable to your workflow:

• Choose whether the default settings can be overridden per merge request
• Choose whether approvals will be reset with new pushed commits

Editing approvals (PREMIUM)

Introduced in GitLab Premium 11.8.

CAUTION: Caution: There was a regression affecting this feature in 11.8. We recommend upgrading at least to version 11.8.2. to avoid any issues.

NOTE: Note: In 11.8 this feature does not work in private groups.

For GitLab Premium, multiple approver rules can be configured. To configure the merge request approval rules:

1. Navigate to your project's Settings > General and expand Merge request approvals.

2. Click Add approvers to create a new approval rule.

3. Just like in GitLab Starter, select the approval members and approvals required.

4. Give the approval rule a name that describes the set of approvers selected.

5. Click Add approvers to submit the new rule.

   

Multiple approval rules (PREMIUM)

Introduced in GitLab Premium 11.8.

For GitLab Premium, a merge request's overall approval status is determined by a set of rules. Each rule contains:

• A set of eligible approvers.
• A minimum number of approvals required.

When an eligible approver approves a merge request, it will reduce the number of approvals left for all rules that the approver belongs to.

If no approval rules are set, then the overall minimum number of approvals required can be configured. With no approval rules, any eligible approver may approve.

Eligible approvers

The following can approve merge requests:

• Users being added as approvers at project or merge request level.
• Code owners related to the merge request (introduced in GitLab Starter 11.5).

An individual user can be added as an approver for a project if they are a member of:

• The project.
• The project's immediate parent group.
• A group that has access to the project via a share.

A group can also be added as an approver. In the future, group approvers will be restricted.

If a user is added as an individual approver and is also part of a group approver, then that user is just counted once. The merge request author, as well as users who have committed to the merge request, do not count as eligible approvers, if Prevent author approval (enabled by default) and Prevent committers approval (disabled by default) are enabled on the project settings.

Implicit approvers

If the number of required approvals is greater than the number of approvers, other users will become implicit approvers to fill the gap. Those implicit approvers include members of the given project with Developer role or higher.

Adding or removing an approval

If approvals are activated for the given project, when a user visits an open merge request, depending on their eligibility, one of the following is possible:

• They are not an eligible approver: They cannot do anything with respect to approving this merge request.

• They have not approved this merge request:

  • If the required number of approvals has not been yet met, they can approve it by clicking the displayed Approve button.

    

  • If the required number of approvals has already been met, they can still approve it by clicking the displayed Approve additionally button.

    

• They have already approved this merge request: They can remove their approval.

  

NOTE: Note: The merge request author is only allowed to approve their own merge request if Prevent author approval is disabled on the project settings.

For a given merge request, if the approval restrictions have been satisfied, the merge request is unblocked and can be merged. Note that meeting the required number of approvals is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for unblocking a merge request from being merged. There are other conditions that may block it, such as merge conflicts, pending discussions or a failed CI/CD pipeline.

Code Owners approvals (PREMIUM)

Introduced in GitLab Premium 11.9.

It is possible to require at least one approval for each entry in the CODEOWNERS file that matches a file changed in the merge request. To enable this feature:

1. Navigate to your project's Settings > General and expand Merge request approvals.
2. Tick the Require approval from code owners checkbox.
3. Click Save changes.

When this feature is enabled, all merge requests will need approval from one code owner per matched rule before it can be merged.

Overriding the merge request approvals default settings

Introduced in GitLab Enterprise Edition 9.4.

NOTE: Note: If you are using GitLab Premium, things are a little different with multiple approval rules. Read the differences in GitLab Premium when overriding merge request approvals.

If approvals are set at the project level, the default configuration (number of required approvals and approvers) can be overridden for each merge request in that project.

One possible scenario would be to to assign a group of approvers at the project level and change them later when creating or editing the merge request.

First, you have to enable this option in the project's settings:

1. Navigate to your project's Settings > General and expand Merge request approvals

2. Tick the "Can override approvers and approvals required per merge request" checkbox

   

3. Click Save changes

NOTE: Note: If approver overriding is enabled and the project level approvers are changed after a merge request is created, the merge request retains the previous approvers. However, the approvers can be changed by editing the merge request.

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The default approval settings can now be overridden when creating a merge request or by editing it after it's been created:

1. Click Edit under the Approvers section.
2. Search for users or groups that will be eligible to approve merge requests and click the Add button to add them as approvers or remove existing approvers that were set in the project's settings.
3. If you want to change the number of required approvals, set a new number in the No. approvals required box.
4. Click Update approvers.

NOTE: Note: If you are contributing to a forked project, things are a little different. Read what happens when the source and target branches are not the same.

Overriding merge request approvals default settings (PREMIUM)

In GitLab Premium, when the approval rules are set at the project level, and Can override approvers and approvals required per merge request is checked, approval rules can be added to an MR with no restriction.

Resetting approvals on push

If approvals are set at the project level, you can choose whether all approvals on a merge request are removed when new commits are pushed to the source branch of the merge request:

1. Navigate to your project's Settings > General and expand Merge request approvals

2. Tick the "Remove all approvals in a merge request when new commits are pushed to its source branch" checkbox

   

3. Click Save changes

NOTE: Note: Approvals do not get reset when rebasing a merge request from the UI. However, approvals will be reset if the target branch is changed.

If you want approvals to persist, independent of changes to the merge request, turn this setting to off by unchecking the box and saving the changes.

Allowing merge request authors to approve their own merge requests

Introduced in GitLab Starter 11.3.

You can allow merge request authors to self-approve merge requests by enabling it at the project level. Authors also need to be included in the approvers list in order to be able to approve their merge request.

1. Navigate to your project's Settings > General and expand Merge request approvals.
2. Uncheck the Prevent approval of merge requests by merge request author checkbox, which is enabled by default.
3. Click Save changes.

Prevent approval of merge requests by their committers

Introduced in GitLab Starter 11.10.

You can prevent users that have committed to a merge request from approving it by enabling Prevent approval of merge requests by their committers.

1. Navigate to your project's Settings > General and expand Merge request approvals.
2. Tick the checkbox Prevent approval of merge requests by their committers.
3. Click Save changes.

Require authentication when approving a merge request (STARTER)

Introduced in GitLab Starter 12.0.

You can force the approver to enter a password in order to authenticate who is approving the merge request by enabling Require user password to approve. This enables an Electronic Signature for approvals such as the one defined by CFR Part 11):

1. Navigate to your project's Settings > General and expand Merge request approvals.
2. Tick the checkbox Require user password to approve.
3. Click Save changes.

Merge requests with different source branch and target branch projects

If the merge request source branch and target branch belong to different projects (which happens in merge requests in forked projects), everything is with respect to the target branch's project (typically the original project). In particular, since the merge request in this case is part of the target branch's project, the relevant settings are the target project's. The source branch's project settings are not applicable. Even if you start the merge request from the source branch's project UI, pay attention to the created merge request itself. It belongs to the target branch's project.

Approver suggestions

Approvers are suggested for merge requests based on the previous authors of the files affected by the merge request.

Filtering merge requests by approvers

Introduced in GitLab Starter 11.9.

To filter merge requests by an individual approver, you can type (or select from the dropdown) approver and select the user.

Security approvals in merge requests (ULTIMATE)

Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 12.2.

Merge Request Approvals can be configured to require approval from a member of your security team when a vulnerability would be introduced by a merge request.

For more information, see Security approvals in merge requests.