Support Merge Request source branches on a different Git server
Problem to solve
I want to be able to open a merge request from a fork of a public project from my fork mirror hosted on a different server, rather than having to have a fork on the same server as the upstream project.
Further details
As a step towards federated merge requests, supporting a source branch hosted on a different server seems a small first iteration.
Proposal
Assuming two GitLab instances, the upstream and downstream, and that I have an account on both, I should be able to:
-
✔ create a public fork of a public upstream project on my downstream server (import the repo, already possible) -
✔ add some changes to my downstream fork -
✨ on the upstream server, create a new merge request and provide a Git URL and select a branch from that Git repo
With some frequency, the upstream will fetch changes from the downstream branch to refs/merge-requests/1/head
In the future, improvements could be made to notify the downstream server of the merge request, and register a callback URL for the downstream server to send notifications of changes to the source branch.
Links / references
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