Code reviews at Google

#1

Post by frognibble » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 1:10 AM UTC

Re: Code reviews at Google

#2

Post by andymoe » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 1:35 AM UTC

http://www.fogcreek.com/kiln/ has almost all the features mentioned and they are really really useful. Free for up to two users with the students and startup discount. The free link takes a bit of digging to find if I remember correctly.

edit:

kiln: http://www.fogcreek.com/Kiln/StudentAndStartup.html

Better yet sign up for fogbugz and add kiln on to fogbugz:

http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/StudentAndStartup.html

Re: Code reviews at Google

#3

Post by dlsspy » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 1:40 AM UTC

I've been using gerrit extensively lately. It's a great review system on top of git.

I work with people around the world on software -- including people I've never met who decide to contribute a change (which enters the same workflow as a project lead). It's just awesome.

Re: Code reviews at Google

#4

Post by AnneTheAgile » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 1:42 AM UTC

The open source implementation, Rietveld [ http://code.google.com/p/rietveld ], sounds very interesting. Perhaps it could be used in programming classes and might also fit in with pair programming training.

Re: Code reviews at Google

#5

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 2:04 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Code reviews at Google

#6

Post by brown9-2 » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 2:05 AM UTC

Blog currently seems down, Google's cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...

Re: Code reviews at Google

#7

Post by curtis » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 3:01 AM UTC

After my experience with code reviews at Google, I came to the conclusion that Mondrian had some definite deficiencies. On the other hand, later at Mozilla, we did code reviews without any real tool support at all. That was a lot worse. I wrote up some of my thoughts in a blog post which you can find at http://curtisb.posterous.com/what-should-mozilla-look-for-in....

Re: Code reviews at Google

#8

Post by houseabsolute » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 3:56 AM UTC

curtis wrote: post #7

After my experience with code reviews at Google, I came to the conclusion that Mondrian had some definite deficiencies. On the other hand, later at Mozilla, we did code reviews without any real tool support at all. That was a lot worse. I wrote up some of my thoughts in a blog post which you can find at http://curtisb.posterous.com/what-should-mozilla-look-for-in... .

> Mondrian had some definite deficiencies

You mean like its approximately two 8s uptime? :P I do think you're spot on about how Mondrian encourages the nit-picking and doesn't do enough to encourage structural discussions. On the other hand, maybe those discussions should be had before there's any code to review. So . . . meh. Tough problem.

Re: Code reviews at Google

#9

Post by curtis » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 4:29 AM UTC

houseabsolute wrote: post #8

curtis wrote: post #7

After my experience with code reviews at Google, I came to the conclusion that Mondrian had some definite deficiencies. On the other hand, later at Mozilla, we did code reviews without any real tool support at all. That was a lot worse. I wrote up some of my thoughts in a blog post which you can find at http://curtisb.posterous.com/what-should-mozilla-look-for-in... .

> Mondrian had some definite deficiencies You mean like its approximately two 8s uptime? :P I do think you're spot on about how Mondrian encourages the nit-picking and doesn't do enough to encourage structural discussions. On the other hand, maybe those discussions should be had before there's any code to review. So . . . meh. Tough problem.

I've always found it hard to do something like a structural discussion without having written some code first. At Google I found that I could request an informal code review in email rather than using the formal request mechanism ("g4 mail"). I could even provide a changelist number so the reviewer could look at it in Mondrian. But by having used email I could frame things so the reviewer would look at the high-level picture. That usually seemed to work.

Re: Code reviews at Google

#10

Post by brg » Tue, Jun 08, 2010, 4:44 AM UTC

houseabsolute wrote: post #8

curtis wrote: post #7

After my experience with code reviews at Google, I came to the conclusion that Mondrian had some definite deficiencies. On the other hand, later at Mozilla, we did code reviews without any real tool support at all. That was a lot worse. I wrote up some of my thoughts in a blog post which you can find at http://curtisb.posterous.com/what-should-mozilla-look-for-in... .

> Mondrian had some definite deficiencies You mean like its approximately two 8s uptime? :P I do think you're spot on about how Mondrian encourages the nit-picking and doesn't do enough to encourage structural discussions. On the other hand, maybe those discussions should be had before there's any code to review. So . . . meh. Tough problem.

I found structural discussions took place in the free form areas of mondrian, and knit-picking was a direct result of two aspects: 1) An strict, but oft changed style guideline 2) The requirement to say something beyond LGTM to prove that the code review was thorough.

The one aspect I missed at Google compared to other large software companies was design document reviews. I found that in writing and disseminating such documents a lot of good work was done.