Ability to reference Maintainers or Developers from CODEOWNERS

Release notes

CODEOWNERS files can now reference specific groups of people assigned to a role, such as Maintainers, Developers, or any custom roles that have been created.

Problem to solve

Currently to reference multiple people in the CODEOWNERS file you have two options:

• Manually list them all.
• Create a group and reference the group.

However if the list of people aligns with one of the repository roles it would be simpler to just reference that role.

Example: Instead of

* alice@example bob@example carol@example

Just write:

* @maintainers

This way you don't duplicate the config. And don't need to remember to update all of the codeowners files every time you add someone else to the repo.

Intended users

• Cameron (Compliance Manager)
  • Less duplication results in an easier audit.
• Delaney (Development Team Lead)
  • When a new member joins the team she can just add them to the Maintainer/Developer role and doesn't need to worry about CODEOWNERS.

Proposal

You can reference a repository role like a group.

Permissions and Security

N/A Regular CODEOWNERS security concerns.

Documentation

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/code_owners.html should be updated to mention this feature.