[Projects Beta] Milestones Across Repositories

[mitchelsellers]

To fully manage projects, across repositories the concept of a "Shared Milestone" would be far easier to manage. Consider the situation where you have a project that is comprised of multiple repositories, but you are working towards a common target (Q4 2021 Release) for example.

It would be ideal to be able to set a milestone at the organization level, and use it within each of these so that the board could show the milestone column and then you group the board by those items.

[OldManFroggy]

I second this, right now I have to create milestones across repositories which is frustrating and prone to error. and a pretty common use case.

[ArthurTschinkel25]

yes bro

[kaishin]

This must be the aspect I am struggling the most with. For now I have duplicated the same milestones across several repositories but that completely beats the purpose.

[jeremydiba]

Agree on the labels

[mhm13dev]

agree for labels

[ignacio-borrajo]

Agree on the milestones and labels

[isanchez-ng]

Agree on the milestones and labels!

[ArthurTschinkel25]

agree on the labels

[EmiliaH]

I also agree with this suggestion! I would really like to be able to assign issues from different repositories to the same milestone!

For example we use submodules in a parent repo, and thus we need attach an issue in the submodule to a milestone in the parent repo.

[ignacio-borrajo]

We also use submodules and the day I realized about the milestones, regret to move all our repos to GitHub

[HHK1]

Is this item in the roadmap going to help solve this issue? github/roadmap#278

[SpoonOfDoom]

Is this item in the roadmap going to help solve this issue? github/roadmap#278

I don't think so, unless I'm misunderstanding it. It still would still mean that I have to duplicate a milestone across all repositories that are involved in a project.

[tleef]

This is the one you want github/roadmap#276

[karlhorky]

I just came here to also offer this as feedback - I would like project-wide (cross-repo) milestones for tracking deadlines and product launches that deal with code in multiple repos.

[karlhorky]

If you just want a column, I realized it's possible to add a column (eg. called "Project Milestone" or "Global Milestone") in the table view now (choose a "Single Select" type):

However, I don't think you can get reports about how many issues are done vs how many open, like regular milestones can show.

[karlhorky]

Just implemented this, and it gets us most of the way to what we want, so far!

[brylie]

Yes, I'm taking this approach as a stop-gap as well.

[shaupt131]

Hmm, interesting approach. Thanks for the suggestion, going to try this out in the meantime.

[ignacio-borrajo]

Yes but no, it is a patch to a real problem I think, no due date, no reports on how many issues are open and close, ...

[thclark]

+1000000. We're desperate for cross-repository milestones - which seem like such a simple thing they should have been done years ago. It's very difficult to implement something satisfactory without multiple actions and third party plugins - and even then there's nothing (even ZenHub) that solves the problem.

Without that, Projects Beta really isn't any more powerful (as far as I can see) than bookmarking URLs of regular projects with different filters activated. With it, Projects beta would become a self-sufficient (although admittedly lightweight) project management tool.

[markborges]

I also think this is a great idea. It seems most of us are using Milestones for controlling Releases, and if a Project can support multiple repositories, then it should definitely support common Milestones among them.

[terracoda]

Definitely need milestones that cross repositories.

[morpheus7CS]

Hi,

we have recently started using Github Projects (Beta). Our aim is to move the entire issue tracking and roadmap and development work management to Github, where our code resides. We love many of the features, but we also have some additional questions that will help us in making this change possible.

Milestones on the organizational level would help us a lot since we are dealing with 3 repository setup (API repository, client app repository, and admin app repository) and many of the changes touch at least two if not all three.

Please implement this soon as it would definitely bring the offering to a whole new level.

Kind regards,
g

[krs13]

Exactly what we're doing - we have multiple repos for different areas of our platform and I would like to tie the issues together in Releases, which is something that cross-repo milestones would accomplish.

[brylie]

As an aside, I think GitHub's lack of cross-repository project management features has been one of the primary factors driving the monorepo trend.

[thclark]

This is very insightful. I hadn't thought of that. But being presently in the middle of a difficult extraction of a monorepo into more sensible pattern, I look back and think yes - that was one of the driving factors in my earlier decision.

[OldManFroggy]

yeah, I moved from a mono repo once I hit 50+ microservices in different languages, getting things to work dev wise on an isolated microservices cost soo much time and training with developers and tooling it was just not worth it in the end. (mainly due to GO and how it deals with modules, the same for D, and to a lessor case RUST)

but for good high-level product/team/work management milestones across repo's would make GitHub issues one of the top if not the top tool for managing code/issues of complex projects. (really pains me, that I have to use another issue tool and only get pull updates in it, and if someone does a GitHub issue on a repo, it needs 2 way integrations (most svck) or you need to manually sync and move things...

Same goes for a good 20 or so companies I have worked with in the past couple years... all are paying more for another tool, due to this single issue. (inc. myself...)

[KnutResys]

Agreed, we are pushing towards monorepos now much for this reason

[kalanchoej]

Also looking for a project based / cross-repo milestone solution.

[ericnelson]

+1 to this feature. Need it ASAP

[JonBushby77]

+1 Setting up milestones and labels, etc in every repository isn't ideal.

[ghost]

FYI: It’s on GitHub’s public roadmap as github/roadmap#276, currently planned in Future. See Issues-view

Though it already got a lot of traction since 2016! on dear-github/dear-github#93. Actually the most 👍🏿 up-votes (on open issues):

Duplicates

• "Milestones should live at the project level" (#8073)

[gabriel-r]

@mitchelsellers you may want to add links/answer from @DominikGM to your original post so people are encouraged to vote up on the right places.

[batatop]

When creating a milestone for a feature, needing to do the same thing for both the app and the server repos feels tedious.

[caligo-erik]

Yup, plus you might even have shared libraries/repos.

[jmackie]

+1

[alexanderilyin]

This is the only reason why I'm considering paying for Jira. Please don't make me do that.

P. S. Cloud Jira is nice but really there is no need to have it in addition to GH.

[VeCard]

This is the only reason why I'm considering paying for Jira. Please don't make me do that.

P. S. Cloud Jira is nice but really there is no need to have it in addition to GH.

Only that? Really? And what about the fact that there are no issues that work across repositories. That is pretty dumb in 2025. So if I want an Epic that has children user stories or tasks or whatever kind of issue you want u don't have a cross container.
That is just another example.

[Norbiros]

I personally use Iteration field in Github Projects. It works almost identically, but I can view it in projects and it works between multiple repositories. The only drawback for me is that I can't filter easily in Issues page (I have to open project)

[maho-jared]

This is a super interesting workaround! Open the issue in the milestone and you can pick a different repository than the one the milestone was created in. Thanks for sharing!

[tomasMizera]

We use this approach too, it works very well 👍🏻

[SydAirey]

do you use 2 week iterations? How do you think this is related to tracking milestones or issues across multiple repos that support a specific milestone or objective?

[Norbiros]

You could use x-week fixed iterations as normal iterations, and that's okay. I am using them more like milestones:

So we plan milestones, give some arbitrary deadlines (they do often shift) and then just assign tasks to specific iteration. Thanks to that in GH projects view I can filter, this "milestone", next, previous etc.

[natemcintosh]

Building off the comment above, you can create a new column in the "Table" view, but instead of Iteration (which operate over a span of time), you can make it a Text column. Then you can type in a "milestone" value for each issue in the project, and then group by the "milestone" column. (Note that it won't let you name the column "Milestone", saying that name is already taken 🙄).

As the comment above says, you won't be able to filter easily in the Issues page, only in the project page.

[aikenka]

Added my vote for this - I'll use the workaround described in the last 2 comments; what's missing in that solution is the ability to provide notes/description for each.
Workaround for that - I'll create a "first issue" for each and put the notes in there.
I can't use parent/child relationships, since an issue can only have one parent, and the issues already have parents in other projects.

[EugenMayer]

Just as a reference, a public roadmap items exist for that github/roadmap#1086 (which superseded github/roadmap#776)

[olekristensen]

I'd love to see them focus on basic features like this. It's been part of GitLab, that I prefer, for ages, but my main customers enforce GitHub. Imagine how fast these basic features could be released if they put as much energy into them as they do in smearing everything with copilot...

[pepinse]

Upvote!

[ranjanvasudevan]

+1!

[JorritBerendsen]

+1!

[minttraveller]

+1

[mofazzelhmorshed]

Yes, you shared Milestones transform disparate repo task lists into a coherent, measurable project roadmap, i think this feature is essential for high level visibility

[sebastianhorwege]

1

[JRiad]

Please, please, please add this feature! 🙏