Create a Merge Request from the Command Line

If you use Git commands to manage source files from your computer, you can create merge requests from the command line when you're publishing changes to a project's repository. You can also add reviewers to merge requests made from the command line.

Use git push options to create a merge request that publishes changes from your local branch to a remote branch:

git push -o mr.target=<target-branch> origin <feature-branch>

where:

<target-branch> is the branch where your changes will be merged.
<feature-branch> is the branch to be reviewed. If the feature-branch you specify is already under review, the merge request won't be created.

For example, this command creates a merge request for the branch myfeature before merging to main:

git push -o mr.target=main origin myfeature

Note:

The Git push -o option is available only with Git version 2.10 or higher. With these versions, you can use the --push-options option or the shorter -o option.

To add reviewers to the merge request, include the mr.add.reviewer option (or use the mr.add.defaultReviewers option to set default reviewers for the target branch). For example, this command identifies two reviewers (clara.coder and tina.testsuite) by their user names:

git push -o mr.target=main -o mr.add.reviewer=clara.coder,tina.testsuite origin myfeature

Both users will be added as reviewers to the merge request for the myfeature branch.

If you're adding reviewers from an Oracle Cloud Application environment that has multiple VB Studio instances in different IDCS identity stripes (or IDM identity domains), use the domain username format that includes the stripe or domain where that user has been defined. Since a unique user may have been defined for multiple domains or stripes, this format ensures that one identity can be distinguished from that user's other unique identities. This should ensure that the user you select is the correct one.

To add a reviewer from a multi-stripe environment to the example above, you need to pass the full domain username, which would be something like : "<idcs-idm_identifier_for_environment_user_is_associated_with>/username" ". This identifier indicates that the username belongs to a unique user in a specific instance in the multi-stripe environment.

The command for adding user tina.testsuite in a specific identity stripe as a reviewer is as follows:

git push -o mr.target=main -o mr.add.reviewer="idcs-e13d5ccf9...7684a6b283ce/tina.testsuite" origin myfeature

Tip:

If you frequently create merge requests, it may be helpful to add an alias for the create merge request option. This needs to be added to the .git/config file at the local level for each repository (refer to Git documentation for details). For example:

cat .git/config 
[alias]
   review = push -o mr.target=main

After doing that, you can use the review alias to create a merge request for the myfeature branch and add clara.coder as the reviewer, for example:

git review -o mr.add.reviewer=clara.coder origin myfeature

Note:

You cannot use the options to create a merge request and add reviewers with the git push --all command or for references other than the HEAD branch.

You can also add a group as reviewers. After you clone a repository and make some changes in a branch (for example, feature123), add and commit your changes. Create a group (for example, reviewers123) and add it as a member of the project that contains the repository you cloned. Then, from your clone, issue a command similar to this one:

git push -o mr.target=main -o mr.add.reviewer="reviewers123" origin feature123

After your changes have been successfully pushed and the merge request has been created, click the See merge request link included in the command output to view the merge request that was created for you in VB Studio, for example:

user123@rmt123 /tmp/code2cloud.example (myfeature) $ git push -o mr.target=main origin myfeature

Enumerating objects: ...

...

remote: [Push Options] See merge request: http://192.0.2.1:8888/test/?_h=projects/test_example/review/39