Gitlab Formatting and reaction issues in v0.28

[ryan-cpi]

Community Note

• Please vote on this issue by adding a 👍 reaction to the original issue to help the community and maintainers prioritize this request. Searching for pre-existing feature requests helps us consolidate datapoints for identical requirements into a single place, thank you!
• Please do not leave "+1" or other comments that do not add relevant new information or questions, they generate extra noise for issue followers and do not help prioritize the request.
• If you are interested in working on this issue or have submitted a pull request, please leave a comment.

Overview of the Issue

When we upgraded from v27 to v28 all the formatting seems to have gone wonky in Gitlab and we are now missing the reaction emojis.

v0.27.3

v0.28.1

[ryan-cpi]

This might relate to https://github.com/runatlantis/atlantis/pull/3889 for the formatting issue. But v28 is still missing the reactions is this now disabled by default?

[jamengual]

it was an original oversight that the reaction was enabled by default, so we rolled that back.

[ryan-cpi]

Do you know where in the docs it says how to enable this again?

[pippitt]

Do you know where in the docs it says how to enable this again?

https://www.runatlantis.io/docs/server-configuration.html#emoji-reaction if you liked the previous reaction set it to eyes looking over this commit https://github.com/runatlantis/atlantis/commit/388bbfdd9072d4aa4e9cce881cad9275f36d1018

[jamengual]

The emoji reaction to use for marking processed comments. Currently supported on Azure DevOps, GitHub and GitLab. If not specified, Atlantis will not use an emoji reaction. Defaults to "" (empty string).

you need to pass a value to the parameter to enable it.

[ryan-cpi]

Thanks both! That solves the reaction issue it never seemed to show up in the search bar in the docs when I looked for "reaction".

But the main issue we found with v28 is the formatting of the attached comments not being as nice in the latest version vs all the older versions. Is that something that can be looked into for any future releases as personally the more compact older comment seems better?

[jamengual]

is there an issue with the formatting?

[YevhenLodovyi]

Is that something that can be looked into for any future releases as personally the more compact older comment seems better?

+ 1. The previous compact version was much better.

• New style requires 2x more space and as a result users have to scroll more and it takes more time to check all stacks
• it is difficult to notice changes since information about lock apply is very distracting. The most important information are changes and not how to plan or apply.

IMHO but such changes should be added as a separate template and user will chose(detailed or compact version)

[YevhenLodovyi]

I would like to propose to move commands to collapsible section(like Show Commands or Show Actions)

• default view

• expanded view

[ryan-cpi]

I think the commands work better in code blocks like this that are sub-bullet points for the plans and applies how they used to be in the version before. With the new format it has a button to copy the text but it copies it with the two backticks so it's not really too useful.

I don't mind much if the commands have their own drop-down or are appended to the bottom of the output I'd lean towards the old way of having them at the end of the output. But it's nice that the GitLab comments finally reference MRs not PRs in this change.

The differences in formatting between the old and new versions look like this taking up double the space.

v27

v28

[jamengual]

@X-Guardian is this possible to customize the template?

[X-Guardian]

The formatting is as designed. Commands are now in code blocks that can be copied with a single click on both GitLab and GitHub and only command output is in a collapsed section.

The additional back ticks when copying in GitLab is a GitLab issue which I'm sure they will fix at some point.

[YevhenLodovyi]

The formatting is as designed. Commands are now in code blocks that can be copied with a single click on both GitLab and GitHub and only command output is in a collapsed section.

I do understand that it designed this way. It is just designed not the best way.

Commands are now in code blocks that can be copied with a single click on both GitLab and GitHub and only command output is in a collapsed section.

I have PRs with XX stacks and I use atlantis apply in 99% cases and I do not need commands how to apply single stack.

The previous style was compact and it was easy to check the changes across all stacks. The new template uses 3x more space for single stack.

why it was decided it is better for all users?

[twix14]

I have PRs with XX stacks and I use atlantis apply in 99% cases and I do not need commands how to apply single stack.

The previous style was compact and it was easy to check the changes across all stacks. The new template uses 3x more space for single stack.

why it was decided it is better for all users?

I'm completely on board with what @YevhenLodovyi said and I share the same pain. In repos with a lot of directories/projects/workspaces you'll get a comment which is much larger, without the need to. Most users I come across, only run atlantis plan + atlantis apply. The template change should've been an opt-in and not an opt-out, since users were free to make the template changes they wanted.