[viatra-dev] Gerrit code review

[Ujhelyi Zoltán <ujhelyiz@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

in the last two meetings we have discussed how to develop APIs collaboratively, while allowing to review the decisions/results at a later point by someone who was not part of the entire discussion.

One idea that popped into my/our heads is to try out the Gerrit code review tool already provided by eclipse.org.

In the meanwhile, there was some long thread on cross-project-issues just about this problem (web archive here: http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/cross-project-issues-dev/msg09901.html) - it was interesting for me to read, as they were arguing about the benefits and costs of using Gerrits.

What I learned from the thread:
 * Some prefer to use Bugzilla attachments, as it is simpler.
 * The Gerrit workflow is not always trivial
 * Gerrit proponents say 
   * It is possible to integrate it with the build system: until it does not build, the committers do not have to review it
   * The patches are available from Git, thus it is "easy" to try the changes out for developers

I also read a bit about the details:
 * There is a nice introduction on vogella.com (don't worry about the installation guide, that part is safe to be skipped): http://www.vogella.com/articles/Gerrit/article.html
 * eclipse.org-related description: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Gerrit
 * The web interface is available in https://git.eclipse.org/r with quite a few projects already participating

I believe, this might be usable, especially when handling contributions of students; however, I am not sure about the cost/benefit ratio, especially considering the issues we sometimes have with Git workflows. :)

What do you think about this?

Cheers,
Zoli
-- Zoltán Ujhelyi
https://www.inf.mit.bme.hu/en/members/ujhelyiz

Fault Tolerant Systems Research Group
Budapest University of Technology and Economics