Redmine Merge Issues

A Redmine plugin that merges issues: moves all content from a source issue (comments, time entries, attachments, sub-issues, relations, watchers) into a destination issue, then deletes the source issue.

Features

Element	Behavior
Source description	Converted into a journal note in the destination issue
Comments / journals	Moved to the destination issue
Time entries	Moved to the destination issue
Attachments	Moved to the destination issue
Sub-issues	Re-parented to the destination issue
Issue relations	Moved (duplicates ignored, self-references avoided)
Watchers	Merged into the destination issue
Custom field values	Source values are snapshotted into a private journal note on the destination (they would otherwise be deleted with the source)
Priority	Escalated to the highest of source and destination
Destination fields	Unchanged (description, assignee, status, etc.)
Merge note	Automatically added as a journal note in the destination issue

Installation

# 1. Copy the plugin into Redmine's plugins folder
cp -r redmine_merge_issues /path/to/redmine/plugins/

# 2. Install dependencies (if needed)
cd /path/to/redmine
bundle install

Permission Setup

1. Go to Administration → Roles and permissions
2. For each role that should be able to merge issues, check "Merge issues" under the Issue tracking section

Usage

From an issue page

1. Open an issue and pick Merge from the "..." actions dropdown
2. Enter the other issue number and choose the merge direction (which issue is kept)
3. Click Merge — the source issue is deleted and all its content is moved to the destination issue

From the issue list

1. Select one or more issues in the issue list and open the context menu (right click)
2. Pick Merge:
   • with a single issue selected, the regular per-issue merge screen opens
   • with several issues selected, a screen asks which issue to keep; all the other selected issues are merged into it and then deleted
3. Click Merge to confirm

The context-menu entry is enabled only when the user has the Merge issues permission on the projects of all selected issues.

Compatibility

• Redmine ≥ 6.0
• Ruby ≥ 3.0

Plugin Structure

redmine_merge_issues/
├── init.rb                                  # Plugin declaration
├── config/
│   ├── routes.rb                            # Routes: /issues/:issue_id/merge and /issues/merge (multi)
│   └── locales/
│       ├── fr.yml                           # French translations
│       └── en.yml                           # English translations
├── app/
│   ├── controllers/
│   │   └── merge_issues_controller.rb       # Merge logic (single and multi-selection)
│   ├── helpers/
│   │   └── merge_issues_helper.rb
│   └── views/
│       └── merge_issues/
│           ├── _action_item.html.erb        # "Merge" link for the issue "..." menu (injected via hook)
│           ├── _context_menu.html.erb       # "Merge" entry for the issue-list context menu (hook)
│           ├── new.html.erb                 # Per-issue merge screen
│           └── new_multiple.html.erb        # Destination picker for multi-selection merge
├── assets/
│   └── javascripts/
│       └── merge_issues.js                  # Moves the merge link into the "..." dropdown
└── lib/
    ├── redmine_merge_issues.rb
    └── redmine_merge_issues/
        └── hooks.rb                         # Redmine view hooks