Creating a branch from issue in GitLab

Question

I've just started using GitLab, and have created a set of issues, in order to keep an overview of what needs to be done for my application. I was wondering if it was possible to create a branch from these issues, such that the branch and issues are linked, similar as in jira and Stash from atlassian?

Answer 1

On the Issue screen, you see a green button labeled "Create merge request", with a down-arrow to its right.

That's not a button, that's a drop down list of buttons.

• Click on the down arrow
• Choose "Create branch"
• Click on "Create branch"
• A branch is created from the issue number, plus the title of the branch
  • For example, my issue #2, with title "Test repoSearch with no repos" will have a branch called:
  • 2-test-reposearch-with-no-repos
  • Notice that it changes case to all-lower-case

Answer 2

TLDR: do a merge request add #2 in the title and/or in the comment box and/or the commit message and it will link the issue to the branch and commit, you could just do a MR right from the start to link it.

It seems the only option for Gitlab is name your branch following this format: <issue-number-<some-branch> like 2-bad-ai this will autolink the branch to the issue.

However, I organize my branches so they live nicely in the .git/ref/heads folder structure like this feature/2-<some-branch> then when you do a merge request add #2 in the title and/or in the comment box and/or the commit message and it will link the issue to the branch and commit, you could just do a MR right from the start to link it.

$ ls .git/refs/heads/; ls .git/refs/remotes/upstream/
2-bad-ai  dev  feature/  hotfix/  master  release/
2-bad-ai  dev  feature/  hotfix/  master  release/ 

I'd much rather have feature/2-bad-ai in the above output...

From what I can tell on Github you can link pull-request to feature/2-<some-branch> but doesn't have the autolinking of 2-<some-branch> like GitLab