HowToReviewBoard

How to Use Review Board

Every MarkUs developer has to use Review Board (even for the smallest commit). Review Board is our tool for peer-reviewing to-be-checked-in source code. This is a short guide as to how to use Review Board.

Creating New Review Requests

Once you have changed the source code of your locally checked out copy of MarkUs you need to create a new review request for these changes. This are the steps you need to do:

1. Create a diff file for your changes made (Do _not_ include files in the diff file, which you do not plan to commit to the MarkUs source code repository). Usually one would use svn diff and redirect output to a file.

2. Go to <http://review.markusproject.org/> and log in with your credentials (If you do not have a Review Board account, request one from the administrator)

2. Click on "New Review Request"

   223. Enter "Base Diff Path" (this is the directory - inside the MarkUs source code repository - you checked out plus possibly some sub-folders inside the MarkUs app you created the diff in). For instance, if you have checked out the "trunk" directory of the MarkUs code base and you created the diff by running <code>svn diff > out.diff</code> in the application root directory, you should enter "trunk" as a "Base Diff Path". You can find out what folders there are in the MarkUs source code repository by [browsing the source code online](https://stanley.cdf.toronto.edu/svn/csc49x/olm_rails/)

   232. Upload the diff you created in step 1

4. Check the diff by clicking on "View Diff"

3. Enter appropriate "Summary" and "Description"

3. If this is a review request for a particular branch enter the branch name in "Branch"

3. If this review request addresses a particular bug for which there exists a ticket enter ticket number in "Bugs"

3. If you want to get review of any MarkUs developer, enter "markus_developers" in field "Groups". If you want to get review by one particular MarkUs developer you enter the Review Board username of that developer in field "People". Note: Groups and People are auto-completing fields, which might be handy sometimes.

2. Once you are satisfied with your review request, you need to publish it in order to have review-request-emails sent out.
3. You may also choose to let your peer developers know about the new

review-request in the MarkUs IRC channel.

Reviewing Code of Your Peer-Developers

In general, after a review-request has been uploaded, there are 3 steps code, topic of a review-request, has to go through before it gets checked in into the MarkUs source code repository: 1. comment review-request 2. revise review-request (if need be) and 3. check in changed source code (_provided_ the review-request got a green light - i.e. a "ship it"). Step one and two need be repeated as appropriate and until the review-request gets a "ship it" (or gets dropped without being committed at all).

But how to comment review-requests? How do you give a "ship it"? The following steps outline how to do these things:

1. Go to <http://review.markusproject.org/> and log in with your credentials
2. Let other developers know that you are about to review review-request X, in order to avoid conflicts

2. Select review-request (from the dashboard) you would like to review and click on it
3. Once you have the desired review-request open, click on "View Diff"

2. Comment code by clicking on appropriate line numbers on the right or in the middle (In order to delete comments click green clip on the very right to open the comment again; then click the "Delete" button)

2. Once you are done commenting code of the review-request, publish your comments. You should _not_ check "ship it", if you expect your peer-developer to revise the review-request!
3. Optionally let your peer-developer know that you have reviewed his/her

code.

3. If you think code is ready to be committed, give a "ship it" by clicking

"Review" or "Edit Review".