[p4] Simple Code Review Tool

[Gary Allan Howard]

Hi Scott,

The company that I work for, hospira.com, has been using Code  
Collaborator from Smartbear.com since September 12, 2006.  We have  
completed over 1400 code reviews with this tool and have found that  
it increases the quality of our software and the productivity of our  
software engineers and software automation engineers.

I’m not recommending that your rush right out and purchase this tool  
but consider its features when you are defining the requirements your  
code review tool / process needs to satisfy.

Questions you might want to answer are:

(1) Is this tool being used to satisfy a regulatory or process  
requirement?

(2) Are you trying to increase the dissemination of information?

(3) Are you trying to eliminate bad programming practices?

(4) What is your branching strategy? Do you use developer, team and  
trunk promotional model? If this or a similar model is used, where do  
you perceive or desire injecting a code review?

(5) When is a code review mandatory? When the work “job” is completed  
or when incremental work is done or both?

(6) How do you plan to allow developers to share code with defects  
while allowing them to proceed with their work efforts? As  
distasteful as this may sound it is a reality that must be addressed.

However you choose to answer these questions and others like them, I  
strongly encourage you to pilot and test your hypothesis.  Expect  
several iterations in your deployment. Finally, whatever choices you  
make, make certain the development team(s) are not working outside  
the Perforce sandbox.

Best Regards,
Gary Howard
Manager, Software Automation
Hospira



On Jul 28, 2007, at 12:00 PM, perforce-user-request at perforce.com wrote:


>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:55:49 -0700
> From: "Scott Marshall" <Scott.Marshall at citrix.com>
> Subject: [p4] Simple Code Review Tool
> To: <perforce-user at perforce.com>
> Message-ID:
> 	 
> <633D19B19DA39346BB2B40D09A3D7EA60373735E at sbapexch02.ad.corp.expertcit 
> y.com>
> 	
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hi there,
>
> Has anyone created a simple code review tool for Perforce
> that allows developers to review code changes before they
> are submitted to the depot? One of my developers is
> working on a simple email that would be sent to a
> reviewer containing the output of the p4diff command.
> However he is running into a problem figuring out how to
> handle new files that are being added as part of the
> pending changelist. Any insights would be helpful?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Scott
>
> Scott Marshall | Build Engineer
>
> Citrix Online Division 		Phone: 805.690.5832
> Citrix Systems, Inc.		Fax: 805. 690.6471
> 5385 Hollister Avenue		Email:
> scott.marshall at citrix.com 	
> Santa Barbara, CA 93111 USA	Web: www.citrix.com
>