self managed Gitlab CE 12.1.x I believe this worked around the gitlab ~11.2 time frame. Scenario is: "User X" is Developer in "Group" "Project" has "Group" as Member, with "Group" having Maintainer access level. User is unable to press the Merge button of a MR. The MR was originated by "User X" and wants to Merge his own MR. The Merge button is blanked out and description says: "Ready to be merged automatically. Ask someone with write access to this repository to merge this request" As far as I understand the user is an eligible approver: help/user/project/merge_requests/merge_request_approvals.md#eligible-approvers => An individual user can be added as an approver for a project if they are a member of: => * A group that has access to the project via a [share](../members/share_project_with_groups.md). Did perhaps the new features "Prevent approval of merge requests by their committers" (Starter 11.3) or "Prevent approval of merge requests by their committers" (Starter 11.10) break that behavior? ## Steps to recreate ### Omnibus Fresh installation of gitlab CE Omnibus 12.1 log in as root * create private project /root/test * initialize the repo with a file (eg, http://localhost/root/test/new/master?commit_message=Add+README.md&file_name=README.md) * create private group /test-group * create user "test-user" * add user "test-user" to /test-group, as Developer * add /test-group as member to project /root/test , as Maintainer As 'test-user' * fork /root/test => /test-user/test * make a dummy change to /test-user/test (eg, to README.md) * create a MR : http://localhost/test-user/test/merge_requests * source: test-user/test:master target: /root/test:master (master!!) * examine MR : http://localhost/root/test/merge_requests/1 * the "MERGE" button is grayed out and says "Ready to be merged automatically. Ask someone with write access to this repository to merge this request" ### GitLab.com * "jansmets" account * group: /jansmets-test-group * added account "jansmets-work" as Developer * project: /jansmets/test * added group /jansmets-test-group as Maintainer * "jansmets-work" account * fork /jansmets/test => https://gitlab.com/jansmets-work/test/ * make dummy change to /jansmets-work/test/ * create MR => https://gitlab.com/jansmets/test/merge_requests/1 * MERGE button also grayed out. Thanks