Batch comments: Allow to add a comment when submitting the review
Problem to solve
People have complained that sometimes they re-assign the MR to the author without submitting a review.
Having the option to add a comment when the review is submitted, allowing the reviewer to re-assign on submission would cover a very common step in MR reviews and make this feature more resilient in terms of behaviour.
@zj voiced this on slack:
I don't use it anymore, as I've assigned a MR back a few times without posting the notes. I'd like a
/submit_reviewquick action too, as that way the 'thanks for this MR, few minor notes' message can be posted at the same time as the actual notes
Further details
A code review often consists of two things:
- a set of concrete comments on the implementation itself via inline comments
- a summary of overall thoughts on the change, via non-inline comments
Currently, the transactional review story covers the first but not the second.
Often, I make a final comment before reassigning back after a review. It would be cool if I could make that comment when clicking the submit review button, instead of waiting for the review to be submitted and then adding a comment.
Proposal
- Add comments to review in MR
- Submit the review.
- While reviewing the comments, you can add a typical "thanks for the MR, few minor notes" comment.
- You can also add a quickaction to re-assign to someone.
Documentation
Should update the MR Reviews section: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/discussions/index.html#merge-request-reviews-premium
What does success look like, and how can we measure that?
Higher usage of Reviews could be a result of this, as we've heard a few cases of ppl dropping the feature altogether.