Allow sorting MRs by merged and closed dates
When sorting the merge request by last updated, I often see some of them suddenly jumping up in the list. The reason for that is that they are indeed updated but by gitlab itself, whenever it’s algorithm adds a comment when a merge request was mentioned in a comment. The problem here is that this also seems to happen when a branch containing merge-commits (such as the master) is merged into a working branch. I not sure when GitLab exactly creates the linking, however, my guess is it might be caused by a later rebase when there was some conflict resolution involved when merging the branch in. It’s difficult to tell since gitlab doesn’t tell where on the new merge request the old merge request was mentioned.
However solving this won’t solve the whole problem of sorting since updating the description of an old merge request or mentioned it in the comments of another merge request as a developer will still result in updating the last updated timestamp.
A simple solution for this which will solve the problem for us would be another sorting option, sorting by the date when the merge request was finished (closed or merged). Note issue might exist for issues, I haven’t checked that but I think it might make sense to have an option to sort by the “Last closed” and “Oldest closed” as well.
ZD: https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/78690
Proposal
Add additional sort options for the merge request lists (group lists, project lists):
- In the merged list: add a
Merged date
option - In the closed list: add a
Closed date
option - In the all list: add a
Merged or closed date
option