Split self-approval restrictions by merge request author and commit author
In GitLab 11.7 we shipped https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3845 which prevents commit authors from approving a merge request. This prevent users approving commits they themselves have authored and are being added to the target branch (commits already in the target branch are ignored).
However, this overlooked the extent to which people commit to each others branches to fix small issues when doing a code review, and similarly applying a suggestion to a merge request also restricts who can approve the merge request.
GitLab should be encouraging everyone to contribute to merge requests and support both behaviors.
Further details
This change in behavior is negatively impacting many customers and GitLab too.
Proposal
Split the current setting into:
- Prevent approval of merge requests by merge request author (enabled by default)
- Prevent approval of merge requests by merge request committers (disabled by default)
Note that the wording has been inverted compared to the current feature.
The current setting which is now covers both of these should be used for setting 1 (merge request author) and the new value for setting 2 (merge request committers) should be off for everyone. We highlight this in the release post.