Add system note when review is submitted that is "comments only"

Context

It's currently hard to know when a MR review ended.

If people used the MR review feature, we could tell when a review ended if the reviewer chose "Approve" or "Request changes" by looking at the MR activity timeline, but NOT when the user only leaves comments:

  • "Approve" MR activity timeline event:
    • Screenshot_2025-01-13_at_14.51.23
  • "Request changes" MR activity timeline event:
    • Screenshot_2025-01-13_at_14.51.11
  • "Left comments" / "Finished review" MR activity timeline event:
    • Not available

It would be useful to have a definite review start/end time to compute statistics about MR review time (see EPIC).

Proposal

If a user submits a review with only comments (i.e. not Approve or Request changes), we leave a note in the activity timeline to indicate an MR review was done:

Screenshot_2025-01-13_at_14.46.36

It could look like this with a comment icon on the timeline:

Screenshot_2025-01-13_at_14.48.43_1

Text Proposal

  • @XYZ left review comments without approving or requesting changes
Edited by Kai Armstrong