Code/Review

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Revision 7 as of 2008-10-09 14:41:57

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DRAFT: this page is a work in progress. Please seek further help or check the wiki index for a complete page on this topic.

Overview

Thanks to Bazaar's distributed model, you can get full access to the code of any branch hosted in Launchpad, with version control and history, right on your own machine.

That flexibility means you can start work on a project without having to get special permissions to commit code. Of course, if you make changes that you want to see integrated into the project's main line you need a way of telling the main line's owner that you want to merge.

Launchpad and Bazaar make that easy. Bazaar was made to merge: even complex merges can be relatively easy. Launchpad helps look after the community process of discussing whether a proposed merge is a good idea.

Proposing a merge

proposed-merges.png

Proposed merges

When you've come to a stage in your development where you're ready to merge your code into another branch registered against the project - such as its main line - you can make a public merge proposal.

To do so, visit your branch's overview page, click Propose for merging into another branch, then follow the on-screen instructions.

Now, Launchpad will notify the proposed target branch's owner of your proposal. Anyone viewing the overview page for your branch, or the target branch, will also see a link to view the details of your proposal.

Code review

Once you've proposed a merge, anyone who has a Launchpad account can comment and vote on the proposal. Taking part in a code review is virtually hassle-free:

Each review consists of votes - approve, abstain or disapprove - and a threaded conversation much as you might find on a web forum or a mailing list. If you're already familiar with Launchpad Bugs, you'll be right at home with code reviews.

As a subscriber to or participant in the conversation, you'll receive email updates as the code progresses. Just as with the bug tracker, you can take part in the review both by visiting Launchpad's web interface and by replying to any of the emails you receive. In effect, each code review becomes an ad-hoc mailing list that exists for the lifetime of the review.

If you want to make your vote specific to one aspect of the proposed merge, you can add a tag. For example: if you wanted to vote disapprove, based on the user interface, you could add a tag of ui.

For an example of a review, take a look at a code review in the Storm project.

Email interface

Using the code review email interface is straightforward. Reply to an email from the code review and your comment is added to the discussion in Launchpad. If you want to vote by email, leave a space at the start of the line and then one of the following commands:

So, if you wanted to vote disapprove, add a tag of UI and also leave a comment, you'd write:

This is a sensisble change but I find the user interface confusing.

 vote disapprove UI

Next step

You can pick choose which parts of Launchpad you want to use. However, when you use different parts of Launchpad together you can make them work together. Let's look at how you can link bug report and blueprints to branches of code.