gitlab-tracker-notify

Optional desktop notification plugin for gitlab-tracker.

Powered by notify-rust, it surfaces MR state changes as native OS notifications. Build without the desktop feature for a zero-dependency stub suitable for headless or CI environments.

Events

Four events trigger a desktop notification:

Clickable notifications

Each notification includes an "Open MR" action button. Clicking it opens the MR directly in your default web browser — no need to switch to the terminal first. The URL is resolved from the web_url field returned by the GitLab API.

Platform support: the click-to-open behaviour relies on D-Bus actions on Linux (GNOME, KDE, etc.) and the system open command on macOS. On environments without a notification daemon the click action is silently ignored.

Anti-spam on startup

Change notifications (updated_at, mergeability, milestone) are suppressed during the initial sync — the first fetch cycle after launch. This prevents a flood of toasts when the app starts and reconciles its in-memory state with the GitLab API. Only genuine changes detected during subsequent background refreshes (or a manual R refresh) will produce notifications.

• ✅ No duplicate alerts when restarting the app with an unchanged state.
• ✅ No spam during the initial sync or redundant refresh cycles.
• ✅ Reliable detection of real changes across refreshes and restarts.
• ✅ One click to open the MR in your browser directly from the notification.

The last-known branch state per MR is persisted in tracker_state.json under the last_known_branches key.

Feature flags

Build without desktop notifications (headless / CI environments):

cargo build --release --no-default-features