Code reviews
This post has been imported from my previous blog. I did my best to parse XML properly, but it might have some errors.
If you find one, send a Pull Request.
Recently, I’ve been involved in a discussion about code reviews. It made me remember a code review board that I introduced in one of my previous projects. Beside that I had to clarify positive aspects of code reviews. Verified by experience the most important point of doing code reviews with a tool is total asynchrony of the process. The reviewer can easily go through the diff, marking lines, changes in a given time selected by himself (or scheduled via team rules). The second point would be the artifact left after this process. It’s not a discussion over a coffee or an email in a private inbox. Once it’s published in a tool, it’s visible part of the project, a manifestation of the change in the code. Isn’t it great?
The list of possible tools to use:
- https://github.com with it’s possibility to comment over pull requests and commits.
- http://www.reviewboard.org/ I used this tool, it’s simple and easy to go with. It’s free!
- Crucible an Atlasian tool. I haven’t used it so far, but hope to do it in a while
Getting asynchronous, public, strongly connected with code discussion over the project. This will make your code thrive and the knowledge spread across the team. Trust me.
