[want to respond to this part] On Thu, 27 Aug 2020, Barry Smith wrote:

Generally I like to pass the Pipeline before making a PR.

This is api/web pipeline - and continues to work as before.

So the test on creating a new MR is annoying.

There is no change wrt MR creation [wrt the merge_request pipelines feature]

Yes after the initial MR I might be able to release the paused job in lieu of starting pipelines fresh.

Yes - and I think its is useful to switch form api/web to merge_request pipeline - once the MR is created.

It would be nice to send some pushes that don't trigger a pipeline start at all because I know I don't need one. Maybe that is possible, I'll need to investigate.

Yes - this is useful - and it will avoid the extra 'blocked' pipelines listing [even-though they are mostly no-op -aka pre stage only - and should be ignored]. Satish