GitLab

Platform-specific commands for describing merge requests on GitLab using glab.

Detect

The repository uses GitLab if git remote -v shows gitlab.com (or any self-managed GitLab) URLs.

Notes on glab

• glab api does not support a --jq flag. Pipe to jq in the shell instead.
• Use :fullpath as the project identifier — glab auto-fills it from the current Git remote (e.g. glab api projects/:fullpath/merge_requests/123). Otherwise URL-encode namespace/repo as org%2Frepo.
• Most glab mr subcommands accept either <iid> or <branch>, and resolve the current branch's MR when called with no argument.
• glab uses -O, --output json (capital O) for machine-readable output. glab issue list uses -P, --per-page (no --limit).

Fetch MR metadata and diff

glab mr view <iid> --output json
glab mr diff <iid> --raw

The MR JSON mirrors the GitLab REST merge request object — useful fields include title, description, source_branch, target_branch, web_url, and detailed_merge_status.

For the commit list (not included in glab mr view):

glab api projects/:fullpath/merge_requests/<iid>/commits | jq '[.[] | {id, title, message}]'

MR template paths

GitLab looks for templates in this order:

1. .gitlab/merge_request_templates/*.md — explicit named templates
2. .gitlab/merge_request_templates/Default.md — applied automatically when no template is selected (case-insensitive)

Group-level templates come from a designated template project; if the project doesn't override them, they apply but live outside the repo.

Search for related issues

glab issue list --search "<terms>" --per-page 5 --output json

Update MR title and description

glab mr update does not accept a description file flag. Read the description body via shell command substitution:

glab mr update <iid> \
  --title "<conventional-commits-title>" \
  --description "$(cat /tmp/pr-description-<iid>.md)"

To update only the title:

glab mr update <iid> --title "<conventional-commits-title>"