CodeReview
From SambaWiki
Code review strategies
I think everybody can learn how to do good code review and I think the most important thing is that everybody reviews his/her own patches in the same way one would review patches from others!
- First read the commit message. Does that give you the impression the change is in anyway complex? If so do, a "careful_mode++".
- Read the diffstat. Does this change touches any critical areas of code? If so, do a "careful_mode++".
- First read the patch hunk by hunk and watch for Coding-Style issues. If there are strange things, do a "careful_mode++".
- Read the patch again as whole, watch for changes which could possibly change the blackbox behavior of a function.
- Depending on the "careful_mode", you should try to fully understand the change.
- Note: Here it's sometimes useful to use the -U<contextlines> feature of git show/diff, so that you see the changes in the full context of the whole function.
- If you found a change in the behavior, set "very_careful_mode = true".
- Ask yourself why a change is needed! If you don't see why it's needed, set "very_careful_mode = true".
- If you find things you don't understand, set "verfy_careful_mode = true".
- If very_careful_mode != true you may be done. This happens most of the time and most of the time careful_mode is also 0. And the costs are not too high.
- Maybe ask other people for review. Trigger discussions on the samba-technical@samba.org mailing list.
- Read the related sources.
- Use git grep to find callers of a function.
- Do manual runtime tests.
Review yourself
I think the most important thing is that everybody reviews his/her own patches in the same way you would review patches from others!