Support Relationships in CODEOWNERS (or Approval Rules)

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Proposal

Currently we can use CODEOWNERS to control the approvers for individual parts of the codebase, or approval rules to cover more generic requirements. These are both all-or-nothing options with no granularity beyond mandatory or optional.

We would like to propose a mechanism is provided where relationships can be defined between elements of the code base, perhaps using an approach similar to merge request approval segregation of duties

For example if we have a CODEOWNERS thus:

* @alice

/path/to/file-1 @bob @carol
/path/to/file-2 @dan
/path/to/file-3 @dan

/.gitlab/CODEOWNERS @erin

We would like to be able to specify a rule that

• if file-1 is changed then @bob or @carol have to approve (existing CODEOWNERS capability)
• if file-3 is changed then @dan has to approve (existing CODEOWNERS capability)

but

• if file-2 is changed then @dan has to approve (existing CODEOWNERS capability) and one of @bob or @carol for reasons, e.g. because file-1 is directly consuming file-2 (proposed new approval rule capability)

At the moment there is no easy way to systemise these sorts of relationships leading to an incomplete approval chain.