title: Can I recover a GitLab merge request for a deleted branch?
body: <p>While doing some branch maintenance today, I lost a MR and the associated discussion.  Not a tragedy but I'd like to get it back if possible.  I found an open GitLab enhancement request to undo branch delete but that doesn't quite seem to be what I want.  Here's what happened:</p>
  
  <p>Branch A was pushed to our local installation of GitLab, an MR created, and some discussion ensued.  We realized that A was a good start but we needed some significant refactoring.  We hoped to keep the branch name for the work we'd ultimately merge/ship so we:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Created A-prime on the local system and pushed it to GitLab</li>
  <li>Deleted A, hoping that the MR would be associated with the commits, not the branch. But when we deleted A, the MR was no longer accessible.</li>
  <li>Recreated A at the same commit as it had been and pushed it to GitLab hoping the MR was hanging out and would get reassociated.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Clearly our mental model of GitLab is wrong.  It seems that a post-commit hook or something deletes MRs as a branch is deleted.  My question now is: can I get the deleted MR and its discussion back?</p>