How to customize a merge request message on Gitlab?

Question

Before starting a new issue, I always create a new branch for it (directly from Gitlab). When I finish the job on that issue (and tests are Ok), I create a merge request (from Gitlab).

After the merge is done, I have an "auto-generated" message linked to that merge (this message is very generic and identical to all merges I done).

The some thing happens also when I merge develop into master:

Is there a way to customize the merge request message to have a message like this:

• Merge {shortIssueName}: {issueDescription} into {develop|master}

Note:

• I'm using GitLab Community Edition 8.15.3.

Answer 1

Globally, automatically - I don't think so. As I see, it's hard-coded:

message = [
  "Merge branch '#{source_branch}' into '#{target_branch}'",
  title
]

if !include_description && closes_issues_references.present?
  message << "Closes #{closes_issues_references.to_sentence}"
end

message << "#{description}" if include_description && description.present?
message << "See merge request #{to_reference}"

message.join("\n\n")

You can override message for any merge request manually:

It's also possible if you create merge request with API. It requires your time but you can build some mechanism that fetches all data with API and set it as a description (but you must ensure all is available with API, issueDescription and so on).

Answer 2

Even tho @piotr-dawidiuk makes a good point, I believe is outdated.

According to gitlab docs, you can create your .md files, changing all templates. Check it here. As it states,

Similarly to issue templates, create a new Markdown (.md) file inside the .gitlab/merge_request_templates/ directory in your repository. Commit and push to your default branch.