Ask HN: Do you pull and run code as part of code review?

We have a server automatically deployed for every branch, so most of the time if I want to see it running I can just check out that server.

Though sometimes I'll check out their branch, open up a repl and run a few functions or something on my own.

For me personally, code review is the place where you take a look at the code structure, architecture and if it is using the correct ways to do things. It's not the place to check if business requirements are met.

Code compilation (and checks) & tests must be requirement as part of each PR

For us the developer is assumed to have run it, the CI checks that it builds and loads, code review is more for the decisions and any gotchas.

Bugs introduced will be caught and fixed in general testing usually.

I wish there was a better workflow for this. We have code across ~10 repos at work, and I'm usually working on something else. So checking out somebody's code for pull requests is pretty disruptive. We generally consider "that the code runs" not to be part of code review, and have a separate testing phase before codes goes into production. Which works, but it definitely could be a smoother process.

Making the code correct is a shared responsibility between reviewer and author; if the code has a bug or doesn't even run that means both people missed the problem. Unless the author is very new/junior (still at a stage where they need close guidance on individual changes) then I would be more annoyed or concerned by an author who hasn't run their change at all than a reviewer who hasn't run it and misses some problem. But I guess it depends on the conventions of the organisation exactly what the balance of responsibility is.

As a reviewer (in the places I've worked so far) for me it depends what type of change it is. E.g., for a frontend change I might need to run it to be able to actually try it out and check what it looks like, whereas for a backend change I might rely more on reviewing the tests and if the tests look good then I probably wouldn't bother running locally to poke at the thing myself. Of course there are also just general issues of how big and how complicated the change is.

Anyway, wherever possible mechanical stuff like "does it build and run" should be covered by a CI system or other automation, not by spending reviewer time on it.