Run the full GitLab merge request review cycle without leaving your IDE. Cockpit for GitLab adds a dedicated tool window where you browse, review and merge your merge requests, and follow their pipelines from first job to green.
- Browse and filter merge requests by role (author, reviewer, reviewer not yet approved) or by user, across a single project, every project of the instance, and multi-root repositories.
- Review in depth: discussion threads with replies, draft reviews with bulk submit, and inline comments anchored to the diff, right inside the editor — with keyboard-first navigation between files and review threads.
- Merge with a status-aware button that knows when the request is mergeable, offers "merge when the pipeline succeeds", and shows the blocking reason otherwise.
- Pipelines for each merge request: a compact attention-first view of stages and jobs, retry, cancel and play actions, live logs with ANSI colors streamed as the job runs — including downstream pipelines triggered by bridges and the post-merge pipeline on the target branch.
- Images and attachments from descriptions and comments are fetched with your token and rendered inline, and you can attach files from the comment composer.
- Configurable notifications, including background polling with the tool window closed, a per-merge-request watch toggle, and "Open in Cockpit" actions that jump straight to the event's section.
Setup: open Settings > Tools > Cockpit for GitLab, add a personal access token with the api scope, and point it at your instance. Works with self-managed GitLab 17+ and gitlab.com.
Install it from the JetBrains Marketplace — in your IDE: Settings → Plugins → Marketplace, search for "Cockpit for GitLab".
Requirements:
- Any IntelliJ-based IDE 2025.2 or newer (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, GoLand…), with the bundled Git plugin enabled.
- GitLab 17+ (self-managed) or gitlab.com, and a personal access token with the
apiscope.
- Open Settings → Tools → Cockpit for GitLab.
- Set your GitLab instance URL and paste a personal access token with the api scope (stored in the IDE's PasswordSafe, never in plain text).
- Press Test connection, apply, and open the Cockpit for GitLab tool window. The project is resolved automatically from your git remotes; repositories with several roots get a selector in the toolbar.
Two-line rows with avatars, branch chips and comment/pipeline badges. Filter by role (author, reviewer, reviewer not yet approved), by any user, by state, or widen the scope to all projects of the instance. Auto-refreshes while open.
Each merge request opens as an editor-style tab: changes tree beside Info | Events & Discussions. Diffs open straight from the API — no checkout needed — with review threads rendered inline below their anchored line, reviewed-files tracking, a changes-by-version selector, and real file-type icons. Draft notes accumulate into a pending review you submit in one go. The Events & Discussions timeline shows system events, emoji reactions, search and filters, and a floating markdown composer with file attachments (up to 10 MB).
Keyboard-first diff review (all remappable, also in the diff context menu):
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Alt+Shift+← / Alt+Shift+→ |
Previous / next file in the diff chain |
Ctrl+Shift+X |
Comment on the caret line |
Ctrl+Alt+↑ / Ctrl+Alt+↓ |
Jump between review threads |
A merge-status-aware button: enabled when mergeable, "Merge when pipeline succeeds" while CI runs, disabled with the blocking reason as a tooltip otherwise. Squash and delete-source-branch choices are remembered. Approve/revoke, request changes, checkout of the source branch, close, copy link and watch live in the vertical action toolbar, and the unified Edit dialog covers title, description, assignees, reviewers, labels and draft state — with destination-branch autocompletion.
A compact, attention-first view: fully passed stages fold into a single row and only stages needing attention keep their own, with a persisted "Show all stages" toggle. Retry, cancel and play jobs, run a pipeline on a branch, and open live job logs with ANSI colors as editor tabs, streamed while the job runs. Downstream pipelines triggered by bridge jobs appear as → bridge · status rows (cross-project included), and once a merge request is merged, the post-merge pipeline on the target branch shows up too — so a red master after merging never goes unnoticed.
Choose which events raise a balloon: pipeline results (including downstream failures), new merge requests in your scope, state changes, new pushes, new comments and approvals. They keep working with the tool window closed via a configurable background poll, any merge request can be added to the scope with its Watch toggle, and balloons can be made sticky. "Open in Cockpit" jumps to the section that matches the event — pipeline balloons open the Pipelines view, comment balloons open Events & Discussions.
./gradlew test # Unit test suite (JUnit4)
./gradlew check # What CI runs (tests + verifications)
./gradlew runIde # Sandbox IDE with the plugin installed
./gradlew buildPlugin # Installable ZIP in build/distributions/
./gradlew verifyPlugin # Plugin Verifier (same as Marketplace)Requires JDK 21+. Architecture, conventions and testing patterns are documented in CLAUDE.md; tickets are referenced as GLC-NN in commits and KDoc.
Known gotcha (build cache): after changing a data class signature (e.g. adding a field with a default to an API model), the Kotlin build cache may serve stale test bytecode and fail with
NoSuchMethodError. Clean it up with./gradlew clean build --rerun-tasks.
Push to main → CI builds, verifies and drafts a GitHub release with the [Unreleased] changelog notes. Publishing that release triggers the signed publishPlugin upload to the Marketplace. Version lives in gradle.properties; change notes in CHANGELOG.md (Keep a Changelog). The Marketplace listing description is injected from the <!-- Plugin description --> block of this README at build time.