Getting Started with Review Board

Analyze and improve your code using the collaborative code review tool, Review Board

Overview

• Learn how to publish code review requests and analyze code in Reviewboard
• Manage Reviewboard easily across all roles in order to facilitate the whole code review process, thereby improving the code quality
• Get a detailed walkthrough of Reviewboard features with real-life workflows and screenshots

In Detail

How would you feel if the world’s craftiest programmer went through every line of code that you wrote before it appeared on the user’s screen? Everyone is not lucky enough to have a person to go through their code! Reviewboard is a powerful web-based code review tool that offers developers an easy way to handle code reviews. It scales well from small projects to large companies and offers a variety of tools to take much of the stress and time out of the code review process.

Based on the philosophy that “Merely using a tool is one thing, using it right is another”, Getting Started with Reviewboard will guide you on a journey to mastering Reviewboard by teaching you how to publish a code review request through the Reviewboard web UI or command line. It will help you become an ace Reviewboard administrator as you’ll learn how to manage users, review groups, default reviewers, repositories, and much more.

This practical, example-oriented book covers the code review workflow in detail. It also talks about the various features in Reviewboard which make your life a lot easier as a code author, reviewer, and administrator.

You will start the journey by looking at the different ways of sharing the code changes (diff) with your team which will also cover integration with a repository. Then, you will look at how a code review can be performed and how you can provide your input on the code changes or on the whole diff. You will also look at the user dashboard, which provides an overview of the review requests and user/group activities which the user is a part of. Finally the administration of Reviewboard application and admin dashboard will be explored. You will end the book by learning advanced tips and tricks to get the best out of Reviewboard.

What you will learn from this book

• Install and set up Reviewboard
• Create a review request with the changes you have introduced
• Publish or share the review request with the team/reviewer/reviewer groups
• Integrate your code with code repositories
• Close the code review request by providing a review comment
• Understand how to search the user dashboard (limited and full text search)
• Manage Reviewboard as an administrator
• Acquire tips and tricks to optimize the usage and performance of Reviewboard

Approach

This book is a concise, to-the-point guide with a practical walkthrough of the code review workflow using the features present in Reviewboard. The various concepts and features are explained through screenshots so that even if you do not have a running installation of Reviewboard in front of you, you can still gain practical knowledge.

Who this book is written for

This book is intended for web programmers or quality control staff who perform or participate in code reviews and who are using (or planning to use) Reviewboard for conducting code reviews. No prior knowledge of Reviewboard is assumed.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to Review Board
Chapter 2: Creating Review Requests
Chapter 3: Reviewing Code Review Requests
Chapter 4: The User Dashboard, Preferences, and Searching
Chapter 5: Installing and Upgrading Review Board
Chapter 6: Admin Settings
Chapter 7: Managing Users and Review Groups
Chapter 8: Admin Dashboard
Chapter 9: Advanced Tips and Tricks