<!-- triage-serverless v3 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THIS SECTION --> *This page may contain information related to upcoming products, features and functionality. It is important to note that the information presented is for informational purposes only, so please do not rely on the information for purchasing or planning purposes. Just like with all projects, the items mentioned on the page are subject to change or delay, and the development, release, and timing of any products, features, or functionality remain at the sole discretion of GitLab Inc.* <!-- triage-serverless v3 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THIS SECTION --> ## Problem to Solve During the review process comments are left on the code changes. This makes it easy to comment on a specific piece of code that needs to be changed. Remembering all of these comments is challenging and they'll need be continuously referenced to ensure that all comments are addressed. ## Vision We want the Web IDE to make it effortless to comment and respond to feedback inside of a Merge Request. By bringing merge requests so the places where engineers are already working we can reduce cycle time and context switching required to efficiently merge changes. ## Additional Details Starting with our MVC allows us to continue to explore and validate this idea. As it currently stands, there is not enough supporting evidence for engineers performing the majority of their work inside of the Web IDE. By incorporating MR discussions in to this tool we may continue to expand usage, but this needs to be evaluated against also performing these kinds of actions closer to where engineers do work (i.e. in VS Code). ## Proposal We should incorporate the conversations of the Merge Request inside of the Web IDE so that both feedback can be given and feedback can be resolved without needing to context switch away. ### What could this look like? In a complete state users could click on a line number in the Web IDE to leave a comment from within the Web IDE about a particular line. Once an author comes to the MR, they'd be able to see the comment threads and respond to the feedback. Once the feedback was resolved the comment thread could be completely resolved from the Web IDE. ### Where do we start? (MVC) - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/249625 - Beginning with a simple visual indicator in the gutter of the Web IDE allows us to establish a visual primitive that there's some kind of feedback about this particular line of a file. This also doesn't commit us to a direction in terms of responding to feedback or creating feedback as a similar interaction model can be used for both. By simply beginning with an indication we can continue to gather feedback and work towards supporting reviewer and author workflows. ## Progress **2020-09-15:** During the %13.5 development cycle (Sept. 18 - Oct. 17) we'll begin exploring design and interaction patterns for [linking to specific line numbers in the Web IDE](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/21762) as well as [showing merge request discussion icon in the Web IDE gutter](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/249625).