CodeReview

Code review strangies

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!