Disable auto-closing issues instance-wide
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Problem to solve
GitLab auto-closes issues when the 'issue pattern' is matched. For example, if I were to put 'Fixes #1 (closed)' or 'Closes #1 (closed)' in a commit or PR description.
In enterprise environments, this is unwanted, as issues should only be closed after a more thorough QA process.
However, auto-closing issues can only be disabled on a per-project basis: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issues/managing_issues.html#disable-automatic-issue-closing
Although https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issues/managing_issues.html#user-responsibility-when-merging says that it is the merger's responsibility to ensure the correct issues are closed, if never auto-closing issues is an organisation-wide policy, this is an unnecessary - and error-prone - burden.
Proposal
Allow auto-closing issues to be toggled instance-wide.
Workarounds:
- Change issue closing pattern (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/issue_closing_pattern.html) to a bogus value. Could be abused by a bad actor, given a merger not paying attention to issues that a given PR would close.
- Disallow the issue pattern from occurring in commit messages (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/repository/push_rules.html). Wouldn't work for PR descriptions, though.