11.8 Create retrospective

This is an asynchronous retrospective for the 11.8 release, following the process described at https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/management/team-retrospectives/.

This issue is private (confidential) to the Create team, plus anyone else who worked with the team during 11.8, to ensure everyone feels comfortable sharing freely. On 2019-02-19, the day of the engineering-wide 11.8 Retrospective, the issue will be opened up to the public, as long as everyone is comfortable with this. You're free to redact any comments that contain information that you'd like to stay private before that date.

Please look at back at your experiences working on this release, ask yourself 👍 what went well this release?, 👎 what didn’t go well this release?, and 📈 what can we improve going forward?, and honestly describe your thoughts and feelings below.

For each point you want to raise, please create a new discussion with the relevant emoji, so that others can weigh in with their perspectives, and so that we can easily discuss any follow-up action items in-line.

If there is anything you are not comfortable sharing here, please message your manager directly. Note, however, that 'Emotions are not only allowed in retrospectives, they should be encouraged', so we'd love to hear from you here if possible.

Issues we shipped

1. [Backend] Override squash commit message
2. Gitlab 11.6.0 sends Content-Disposition: attachment in blob/raw API
3. Incorrect diff when suggesting change to markdown list
4. Popover for diff and file tree settings in merge request
5. Fix merge request file path abbreviation
6. Create a new pipelines finder for Merge Requests
7. Disable resolve conflicts button if the merge request source branch is protected
8. Fuzzy file finder in the merge request
9. Collapse directory structure in MR file tree
10. Hook error message
11. Merge request file browser should always be possible show/hide
12. Store merge request diffs in object storage as an alternative to PG
13. Lines changed statistics is not easily visible in MR changes view
14. When merging an MR, the squash checkbox isn't always supported
15. Allow enabling separate pieces of functionality using feature flags in the configuration
16. Instance administrator / auditor can't view private personal snippets
17. "Rebase" button does not appear if out-of-date MR has failing pipeline
18. Override squash commit message
19. Removing Project fails with error message
20. Inline plots do not show up in the jupyter notebook preview
21. Changing wording to "Delete" when referring to removing a branch
22. More issues - this list only includes deliverables!

Issues that slipped

1. Suggest multiple line change within a merge request
2. When 'self-approval' is enabled no 'explicit approvers' (or not enough users) are set - allow authors to self-approve
3. Display output from pre-receive scripts
4. Create merge refs for MRs
5. Require merge request approval by code owners
6. Filter merge requests by individual approvers
7. Download a folder from repository (not complete repository or single files)