I can kinda understand GitLab's reasoning (correct me if I'm wrong): if the conflict resolution needs to happen on the destination branch and the PR author has no permission to directly commit into the destination branch, then there is no way for the PR author to resolve the conflict themselves at all.
Could GitLab adopt a middle-ground approach? Automatically create a new branch where the conflict resolution will happen, so that the feature branch remains untouched, causing fewer unpleasant surprises to the PR author.
It is completely non-intuitive UX which is causing a lot of people issues. Merging branches is the bread and butter of GIT, if you are changing a fundamental primitive (mergers) of how a technology is expected to work, by reversing the direction of the merge request (opposite to the direction provided explicitly by the user) without warning that is a major issue.
It's not really messing with anything fundamental about Git — in fact it's providing a very common workflow for Git users, just in a way that is confusing for people who mainly use Github.
Obviously if lots of people are getting confused something needs to be fixed, but I think this is fundamentally a minor UI wart.
> just in a way that is confusing for people who mainly use Github.
As a user I am requesting to merge branch X into branch Y. What Github actually does is merge branch Y into branch W, with insufficient warning to the user. Gitlab users continue to have issues due to this unexpected behavior. I am astounded this problem has not been addressed in a meaningful way, so users dont counter this issue.
Personally, I think, the merge requests UX in Gitlab ar mediocre compared to GitHub.
The diffs are hard to read because the way render differences. Also it's hard to spot when your merge request has merge conflicts. Could be way more clearly marked.
Also really wish they had similar bot and checks supports like GitHub has.
I've been using gitlab for years, and I think the same about github merge requests - they are extremely hard for me to read. Matter of preference, I guess
Could GitLab adopt a middle-ground approach? Automatically create a new branch where the conflict resolution will happen, so that the feature branch remains untouched, causing fewer unpleasant surprises to the PR author.