Differences between revisions 1 and 7 (spanning 6 versions)

This page covers the process for effectively dealing with code and design reviews.

Contents

Overview

Overview

During the development of a feature from concept to rollout there are a number of reviews that occur. The first review process is the SpecificationProcess where the concept is examined and refined into a plan. This plan is eventually signed off by the appropriate manager. Some time later, a coder will start to implement it. When they are about to do this a DesignPhoneCall takes place, which is a verbal review of the design of the planned implementation. Finally, once the code is complete the PreMergeReviews process takes place.

Specification reviews

Please see SpecificationProcess for the specification workflow.

Design reviews

Design reviews are conducted by a DesignPhoneCall between a coder and a reviewer. The review aims to ensure that the resulting code will have few or no structural problems, which makes review of the code easier and faster.

Code reviews

Once your code is complete, it must go through the PreMergeReviews process to be accepted into the central trunk. See https://help.launchpad.net/Code/Review to learn about Launchpad Merge Proposals.

Handling review responses

The story starts with you making a Launchpad Merge Proposal into launchpad-devel or launchpad-db-devel. From there the branch is queued for review at https://code.launchpad.net/launchpad/+activereviews . You may ask an on-call reviewer in #launchpad-reviews to review the branch outside of the queue.

Once your reviewer has had time to go over the modifications, he will reply to the proposal with a description of areas or items that need to be fixed, modified or improved in your code. He may also write special recommendations, commend you for your code quality, or ask questions if unclear on domain specifics or obscure functionality.

You must respond to each individual suggestion and question made by your reviewer; one of the main dangers with reviews is wasting the reviewer's time by ignoring or forgetting to deal with some specific issue, and the reviewer can't be expected to go through and ensure each item was dealt with --- please make an effort to ensure you respond accurately to reviews.

One or more review cycles will be necessary per-modification; the number of cycles will depend on the amount of code changed, the increasing familiarity of the reviewer with your code, and of course the quality of the code produced.

You may only merge once the reviewer has approved the modification and you have made all changes that were requested. If you want to make a case why a specific suggestion should not be followed then you must bring it up with the reviewer and not merge until agreement has been reached and documented in the merge proposal.

Small branches are faster to review than large ones - a branch that is twice as big as another takes more than twice as long to review. Please try to keep branches small and focused.

Mentored reviews

When developers apply to become Launchpad reviewers they are assigned a mentor. We began referring to the person being mentored as a mentat, a made-up word you may see in reference to mentoring.

If your merge proposal is reviewed by a mentat his/her mentor will need to review the review. The mentat should add his mentor to the merge proposal. You must wait for both to approve the merge proposal before merging it.

UI reviews

If your branch changes the UI in any significant manner (even text rewordings) you'll need to seek a UI review. The UI reviewers are listed on ReviewerSchedule under the specialties column. If your UI reviewer is being mentored you'll need to follow the procedure outlined above to ensure the UI review is properly reviewed.

Dealing with Conflicts

If, after a successful review process, you submit your code to PQM only to find conflict you need to resolve the conflicts:

Merge rocketfuel onto your reviewed branch,
resolve the conflict,
push, and
submit again to PQM.

If, in the process of resolving conflicts, you make non-trivial changes to the code, you should consider having those changes reviewed before attempting to merge them.

The merge message

Each merge message must include an item indicating who the reviewer of the change was. This is the general form of a commit message.

[r|rs=foo,bar][ui=none|baz|rs][bug=nnnnnn] describe the change.
'r' means review, 'rs' means rubberstamp. One or ore reviewers must follow the r or rs. The 'ui' token states who reviewed the ui; none may be used when there is no ui, and rs may be used when there is ui, but it needs review after merging.
[testfix] is a special leading token required to land a branch when trunk branch is broken and future merges must supply a fix.

Make it so

When you are ready to submit your branch to pqm for merging, use the following command (from RocketFuelSetup):

bzr pqm-submit -m '[r=reviewer] description of changes'

You can simplify the process of running tests on EC2 and landing your branch by doing the following:

Get your merge proposal reviewed and in the 'Approved' state,
Set the 'Commit Message' on the merge proposal to be the description of the branch, as above but without the reviewers and bug information. (Only the part above marked 'describe the change'.)
utilities/ec2 land
Enjoy a snack, a nap, or take in a movie while ec2 runs the test suite and then submits your branch to PQM.

Note: ec2 costs real money and only Canonical employees are currently allowed to submit to PQM. For those reasons community contributors must find a Canonical developer to test and land their changes. Usually you can arrange for your reviewer to do it but do not assume he will -- explicitly ask him to do so when the review is approved.

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-Describe WorkingWithReviews here.This page covers the process for effectively dealing with code and design reviews.
+This page covers the process for effectively dealing with code and design reviews.
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+See https://help.launchpad.net/Code/Review to learn about Launchpad Merge Proposals.
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-'''Please be sure to use the [[LPReviewPluginDocs|bzr review-submit]] plugin to submit your branch for review.'''
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+Line 28:
-The story starts with you putting your branch in the general queue on PendingReviews. From there the branch is assigned to a reviewer within 1 working day. At this point you can nag your reviewer effectively until he reviews your branch.
+The story starts with you making a Launchpad Merge Proposal into launchpad-devel or launchpad-db-devel. From there the branch is queued for review at https://code.launchpad.net/launchpad/+activereviews . You may ask an on-call reviewer in #launchpad-reviews to review the branch outside of the queue.
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-Once your reviewer has had time to go over the modifications, he will email you back, CC: launchpad-reviews, with a description of areas or items that need to be fixed, modified or improved in your code. He may also write special recommendations, commend you for your code quality, or ask questions if unclear on domain specifics or obscure functionality.
+Once your reviewer has had time to go over the modifications, he will reply to the proposal with a description of areas or items that need to be fixed, modified or improved in your code. He may also write special recommendations, commend you for your code quality, or ask questions if unclear on domain specifics or obscure functionality.
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-You may only merge once the reviewer has approved the modification.
+You may only merge once the reviewer has approved the modification and you have made all changes that were requested.  If you want to make a case why a specific suggestion should not be followed then you must bring it up with the reviewer and not merge until agreement has been reached and documented in the merge proposal.
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-=== Review tags ===
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-During the review process, you should keep your branch tags updated correctly in
+=== Mentored reviews ===
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-    PendingReviews
+When developers apply to become Launchpad reviewers they are assigned a mentor.  We began referring to the person being mentored as a ''mentat'', a made-up word you may see in reference to mentoring.
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-The tags are meant to give better feedback of where the review stands,
and will allow the [[https://chinstrap.ubuntu.com/~jamesh/pending-reviews/|review status page]]
to show the branches clearly.
+If your merge proposal is reviewed by a ''mentat'' his/her ''mentor'' will need to review the ''review''.  The mentat should add his mentor to the merge proposal.  You must wait for both to approve the merge proposal before merging it.
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-The tags may assume one of the following strings:
+=== UI reviews ===
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-    * needs-review

        The initial status. Also indicates a branch which is pending
        further review feedback from a reviewer.

    * needs-reply

        The branch has been reviewed and awaits a
        response from the code/patch author.

    * merge-conditional

        The branch has been approved for merging pending comments or
        minor fixes that the review pointed out in his review message.

    * merge-approved

        The branch has been OK to be merged, unconditionally.

    * work-in-progress

        The branch is not ready for review, or has been pushed back out of 
        review into this state. It is listed for convenience, so people can
        find relevant branches, and see the current diff.

Also, if your branch was reviewed by a mentored reviewer (a.k.a. a recruit),
your review status will have a '*' appended to it.  This means that the mentor
has not yet signed off on the review. '''You may never land a starred
branch.'''  Once the recruit's mentor has signed off on the branch, the
recruit will remove the star and then the review status may be acted on.  It's
your responsibility to ping your reviewer if your branch is sitting in
`merge-approved*` or `merge-conditional*`.  That way, your reviewer can bug
his mentor to perform the oversight sign off.

There is usually a cycle between `needs-review` and `needs-reply` and
finally ending with one of the merge tags. When you have replied to the
reviewer, change the tag to `needs-review`; when the reviewer has reviewed
(and possibly re-reviewed) the branch, he will move it back to
needs-reply. Spiv's diagram summarizes:

{{{
                             .--------------------.
                             |                    |
                             v                    |
                     .--------------.      .-------------.
        START --->   | needs-review | ---> | needs-reply |
                     '--------------'      '-------------'
                            /|\
 .-------------------.     / | \     .----------------.
 | merge-conditional | <--'  |  '--> | merge-approved |
 '-------------------'       |       '----------------'
                             |
                    .------------------.
                    | work-in-progress |
                    '------------------'

}}}
+If your branch changes the UI in any significant manner (even text rewordings) you'll need to seek a UI review.  The UI reviewers are listed on ReviewerSchedule under the ''specialties'' column.  If your UI reviewer is being mentored you'll need to follow the procedure outlined above to ensure the UI review is properly reviewed.
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-. Merge rocketfuel onto your reviewed branch, resolve the conflict, push, and submit another merge request.
+. Merge rocketfuel onto your reviewed branch,
 1. resolve the conflict,
 1. push, and 
 1. submit again to PQM.
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+Line 62:
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-Each merge message '''must''' include an item indicating who the reviewer of the change was. There are a few special-cases involved, so the rules for the merge message are detailed below individually:
+Each merge message '''must''' include an item indicating who the reviewer of the change was. This is the general form of a commit message.
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-  * If the modification went through the normal review process, you should add an 
  {{{
    r=fooReviewer  }}}
  string to your merge summary.
+  * {{{[r|rs=foo,bar][ui=none|baz|rs][bug=nnnnnn] describe the change.}}} <<BR>> 'r' means review, 'rs' means rubberstamp. One or ore reviewers must follow the r or rs. The 'ui' token states who reviewed the ui; none may be used when there is no ui, and rs may be used when there is ui, but it needs review '''after''' merging.
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-  * If multiple reviewers were involved, you may use the form
  {{{
    r=fooReviewerA,fooReviewerB  }}}
    in your message. Optionally, you can be more precise and say something similar to
  {{{
  r=fooReviewerA for modifications to frobbing, and r=reviewerB for the baznification changes  }}}
+  * {{{[testfix]}}} is a special leading token required to land a branch when trunk branch is broken and future merges must supply a fix.
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-  * If your reviewer has said that the changes may be landed without specific or in-depth code review -- IOW, he did not look at the diffs and comment and approve them directly, use an rs (Rubber Stamp) string:
  {{{
    rs=fooReviewer  }}}
  Rubber stamps should be rare and only applicable in special cases, or when the change is trivial.

  * If you have a one or two-line patch that doesn't seem to require review, or for which a review is deemed too onerous, you should attempt to seek a fast review over IRC. Failing that, you may use a [trivial] marker:
  {{{
    [trivial] Frob the baznified parachunkulators.  }}}
  as the first item in your merge summary. Trivial merges are intended to be rare and should be reviewed if possible, even if over IRC.
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-where {{{[r=reviewer]}}} is the most common  case, but may be substituted with any review status from above as appropriate.  Here's an example:
+You can simplify the process of running tests on EC2 and landing your branch by doing the following:
 1. Get your merge proposal reviewed and in the 'Approved' state,
 1. Set the 'Commit Message' on the merge proposal to be the description of the branch, as above but without the reviewers and bug information.  (Only the part above marked 'describe the change'.)
 1. {{{utilities/ec2 land}}}
 1. Enjoy a snack, a nap, or take in a movie while ec2 runs the test suite and then submits your branch to PQM.
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+Line 86:
-{{{
bzr pqm-submit -m'[r=BjornT] Fix bug 523.'
}}}

If you like being extra cautious, you might want to use the {{{--dry-run}}} option first, just to check that everything is in order before submitting:

{{{
bzr pqm-submit --dry-run -m'[r=BjornT] Fix bug 523.'
}}}

=== After you've merged ===

Once your branch or patch has landed, you should visit PendingReviews and remove the branch.
+'''Note:''' ec2 costs real money and only Canonical employees are currently allowed to submit to PQM.  For those reasons community contributors must find a Canonical developer to test and land their changes.  Usually you can arrange for your reviewer to do it but do not assume he will -- explicitly ask him to do so when the review is approved.

launchpad development

Diff for "WorkingWithReviews"