GitLab

Bring your code to the center of your decision-making with GitLab and DevRev. The GitLab integration allows users to onboard to DevRev and automate day-to-day activities, eliminating tedious manual tasks.

Work automation: Connect GitLab events to your DevRev issues.
Magic Commands: Update DevRev issues without leaving your IDE.
Autotrack work: Automatically track your work in DevRev even without creating an issue ahead of time.
PR Task Creation: Create DevRev tasks for PR reviewers.
PR Reminders: Automatically remind PR reviewers when a PR goes stale.

For more information, refer to the GitLab snap-in on the DevRev marketplace.

Installation

In DevRev, go to Settings > Snap-ins and click Explore Marketplace in the top-right corner.
In the DevRev marketplace, find GitLab for DevRev and click Install.
During the snap-in installation, follow the instructions for installing the webhook. The webhook can be installed for an entire GitLab org or specific repositories.

Configuration

Work automation

You can enable GitLab work automation through GitLab snap-in by establishing a GitLab connection and setting up a webhook.

GitLab events

Associate GitLab events with DevRev work

You can associate GitLab commits, branches, and pull requests with the issues they correspond to. Doing so allows you to see GitLab activity in the corresponding DevRev issue and to act on those events, allowing you to automate your manual tasks.

Commits

You can associate commits with their corresponding issue by either of these methods:

Including one or more issue IDs anywhere in the commit message.
- For example: Fix: paging issue (issue:123)
- For example: Disable routing table ISS-123 and default to zero ISS-231
Including it in a branch that's associated with an issue.

Branches

You can associate a branch with its corresponding issues by including one or more issue IDs in the branch name. For example, skr/iss-123/gitlab-snapin. All commits in this branch are automatically associated with the issue iss-123, without you having to explicitly include it in the commit message.

Pull requests

You can track your PRs with the corresponding issues by including one or more issue IDs in the PR title. For example, the PR title iss-123 Fixes paging issue links the PR to ISS-123.

Work formats

You can explicitly link an issue ID to a commit, branch, or PR by using the following formats:

Using a display ID: ISS-123
Using an issue ID: issue:123

The display ID and issue ID are case-insensitive, the following are all acceptable and refer to the same issue:

ISSUE:123
Issue:123
issue:123
ISS-123
Iss-123
iss-123

Automation

After a GitLab event is associated with an issue, the status of that issue is automatically updated according to the stages you have selected and configured in the snap-in configuration screen. An example configuration of GitLab event-to-stage mapping can be:

GitLab Event	Stage to assign to
New commit	In Development
New branch	In Development
PR Opened	In Review
PR Closed	In Development

Magic commands

With magic commands, you can perform various actions on your DevRev issues without leaving your IDE.

Supported magic commands:

Toward

/toward can be used in a PR body to associate a PR with multiple DevRev issues without having to include them in the PR title. This associates the PR with the issues and the automations for stage changes apply just as if the issue IDs had been included in the title.

For example:

1 Fixes various formatting issues.
2 /towards ISS-31 ISS-232 ISS-421

Close

/close can be used in a PR body to both associate a PR with multiple DevRev issues and close them when the PR is merged. This associates the PR with the issues and the automations for stage changes apply as soon as the PR is pushed to GitLab. Once the PR is merged, the issues are closed.

For example:

This associates and closes all 3 issues.

1 Fixes various formatting issues.
2 /close ISS-31 ISS-232 ISS-421

The special keyword #work can be used to close any issues already associated with a PR without having to specify them, such as when the issue IDs are already in the title.

1 Fixes various formatting issues.
2 /close #work

Automatic work detection

DevRev can automatically track your coding activity, even if you don't explicitly associate it with an issue. When you create a new branch or PR, and the branch or PR isn't explicitly associated with an issue, DevRev creates an issue for you. This is called this an autonomous issue or autonomous work item. DevRev tries to fill in the details for you but you can rename the issue in DevRev, or mark it as belonging to a different, existing issue.

To make use of this feature, go to Configurations > Track Autonomous work.

You can keep it turned off if you choose to explicitly create issues and link your GitLab activity or you can enable it either for PR creation or branch creation event.
Select the default part under Default part for autonomous issues as a default Part ID if you enable Track autonomous work. Autonomous issues originating from GitLab are attributed to a default part. You can configure the default part while setting up your snap-in. Every issue in DevRev must have a part attribution.

Autonomous work lifecycle

The lifecycle of autonomous work is also automatically updated based on the stage of GitLab event mapping. Closing of autonomous work items based on PR close event is a user-level setting that each individual developer can opt-in for based on their preferences under My Settings and toggle on Enable for Me.

Task creation

DevRev can help you keep track of your issues while they're in the PR process. With PR Task Creation, a task is created for each PR reviewer in the DevRev issue associated with the PR. These tasks are automatically marked as completed when the reviewer approves or denies the PR or when the PR is closed for any reason.

To make use of this feature, the following conditions must be met:

Create task for PR reviewers is enabled under My Settings and toggle on Enable for me.
Each developer that wants to use this feature links their GitLab account by going to Settings > Account > External Identities and Link GitLab Account.

PR reminders

PRs can often go stale and delay the development process. With PR reminders, developers can be automatically notified when a PR has been inactive for a period of time.