Parity page claims mr retarget exists; nothing implements it #46

closed cmc opened this on 2026-08-28 03:17 UTC

Discussion

cmc 2026-08-28 03:17 UTC

The Parity wiki page lists, under Merge requests:

retarget    ssh/cli: yes    web: no

There is no such capability on any surface. grep -rni retarget over the repository returns nothing — no command registration, no store method, no template. store.MR.TargetRef is only ever read; nothing updates it, and mr edit takes --title and --body only.

So the row is wrong in both columns, not just the web one. It reads as a web gap when it is actually an absent feature, which is the sort of thing that sends someone looking for a command that was never written. Found while auditing iOS parity: I chased this row expecting to implement the iOS half.

Three ways out, and I have no strong opinion between them:

  • Drop the row, if retargeting is not a capability gitbay intends to have.
  • Correct it to ssh/cli: no, web: no and keep it as a known gap.
  • Implement it: mr retarget <owner/name> <n> <branch>, recomputing the merge base — at which point the row becomes true.

The wider point is that the page is only useful if a yes is verifiable. A row nothing implements costs more than a missing row.

closed by commit 93b38a063b by cmc: mr: retarget an open merge request onto another branch

2026-08-30 06:16 UTC