Number of required approvals is counterintuitive on the merge request list
Currently, we display the number of approvals / the number of required approvals as:
which means 0 users out of eligible 3 approved.
However, it doesn't mean that exactly 3 users are required to go to the merge request and click approve. There are cases when a single user can satisfy all the rules and approve the merge request:
In this case, we'll see that approval from 1 user out of 3 approved the whole merge request:
On the other hand, there are cases when 4 users can't approve a merge request because they couldn't satisfy the rules:
In this case, we'll see that approval from 4 users out of 3 couldn't approve the whole merge request:
Summary
In the cases above, the number of required approvals doesn't tell us any useful information but actually can be confusing:
Proposal
First and foremost, we should prioritize displaying required approvals information. These block merge requests and are more important than optional approvals.
Here's an example of how this would work. Imagine the following approval rules:
- FE: 1 required • Eligible approvers: John, Alice
- Database: 2 required • Eligible approvers: John, Alice
- BE: 1 required • Eligible approver: Alice
Now, depending on who approves, this is what would happen:
- If no one has approved, it would read in the list
4 leftand the tooltipRequired approvals. - If John approves, it would read
2 leftand the tooltipRequired approvals (1 given). - If Alice then approves after John, it would read
Approvedand the tooltip2 approvers.








