Documentation: add ReviewingGuidelines
Add a reviewing guidelines document including advice and common terminology used in Git mailing list reviews. The document is included in the 'TECH_DOCS' list in order to include it in Git's published documentation. Helped-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de> Helped-by: Derrick Stolee <derrickstolee@github.com> Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> Helped-by: Josh Steadmon <steadmon@google.com> Signed-off-by: Victoria Dye <vdye@github.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This commit is contained in:
Victoria Dye
Junio C Hamano
parent
ac8035a2af
commit
e01b851923
@ -90,6 +90,7 @@ SP_ARTICLES += howto/coordinate-embargoed-releases
|
||||
API_DOCS = $(patsubst %.txt,%,$(filter-out technical/api-index-skel.txt technical/api-index.txt, $(wildcard technical/api-*.txt)))
|
||||
SP_ARTICLES += $(API_DOCS)
|
||||
|
||||
TECH_DOCS += ReviewingGuidelines
|
||||
TECH_DOCS += MyFirstContribution
|
||||
TECH_DOCS += MyFirstObjectWalk
|
||||
TECH_DOCS += SubmittingPatches
|
||||
|
||||
162
Documentation/ReviewingGuidelines.txt
Normal file
162
Documentation/ReviewingGuidelines.txt
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,162 @@
|
||||
Reviewing Patches in the Git Project
|
||||
====================================
|
||||
|
||||
Introduction
|
||||
------------
|
||||
The Git development community is a widely distributed, diverse, ever-changing
|
||||
group of individuals. Asynchronous communication via the Git mailing list poses
|
||||
unique challenges when reviewing or discussing patches. This document contains
|
||||
some guiding principles and helpful tools you can use to make your reviews both
|
||||
more efficient for yourself and more effective for other contributors.
|
||||
|
||||
Note that none of the recommendations here are binding or in any way a
|
||||
requirement of participation in the Git community. They are provided as a
|
||||
resource to supplement your skills as a contributor.
|
||||
|
||||
Principles
|
||||
----------
|
||||
|
||||
Selecting patch(es) to review
|
||||
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
||||
If you are looking for a patch series in need of review, start by checking
|
||||
latest "What's cooking in git.git" email
|
||||
(https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqilm1yp3m.fsf@gitster.g/[example]). The "What's
|
||||
cooking" emails & replies can be found using the query `s:"What's cooking"` on
|
||||
the https://lore.kernel.org/git/[`lore.kernel.org` mailing list archive];
|
||||
alternatively, you can find the contents of the "What's cooking" email tracked
|
||||
in `whats-cooking.txt` on the `todo` branch of Git. Topics tagged with "Needs
|
||||
review" and those in the "[New Topics]" section are typically those that would
|
||||
benefit the most from additional review.
|
||||
|
||||
Patches can also be searched manually in the mailing list archive using a query
|
||||
like `s:"PATCH" -s:"Re:"`. You can browse these results for topics relevant to
|
||||
your expertise or interest.
|
||||
|
||||
If you've already contributed to Git, you may also be CC'd in another
|
||||
contributor's patch series. These are topics where the author feels that your
|
||||
attention is warranted. This may be because their patch changes something you
|
||||
wrote previously (making you a good judge of whether the new approach does or
|
||||
doesn't work), or because you have the expertise to provide an exceptionally
|
||||
helpful review. There is no requirement to review these patches but, in the
|
||||
spirit of open source collaboration, you should strongly consider doing so.
|
||||
|
||||
Reviewing patches
|
||||
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
||||
While every contributor takes their own approach to reviewing patches, here are
|
||||
some general pieces of advice to make your reviews as clear and helpful as
|
||||
possible. The advice is broken into two rough categories: high-level reviewing
|
||||
guidance, and concrete tips for interacting with patches on the mailing list.
|
||||
|
||||
==== High-level guidance
|
||||
- Remember to review the content of commit messages for correctness and clarity,
|
||||
in addition to the code change in the patch's diff. The commit message of a
|
||||
patch should accurately and fully explain the code change being made in the
|
||||
diff.
|
||||
|
||||
- Reviewing test coverage is an important - but easy to overlook - component of
|
||||
reviews. A patch's changes may be covered by existing tests, or new tests may
|
||||
be introduced to exercise new behavior. Checking out a patch or series locally
|
||||
allows you to manually mutate lines of new & existing tests to verify expected
|
||||
pass/fail behavior. You can use this information to verify proper coverage or
|
||||
to suggest additional tests the author could add.
|
||||
|
||||
- When providing a recommendation, be as clear as possible about whether you
|
||||
consider it "blocking" (the code would be broken or otherwise made worse if an
|
||||
issue isn't fixed) or "non-blocking" (the patch could be made better by taking
|
||||
the recommendation, but acceptance of the series does not require it).
|
||||
Non-blocking recommendations can be particularly ambiguous when they are
|
||||
related to - but outside the scope of - a series ("nice-to-have"s), or when
|
||||
they represent only stylistic differences between the author and reviewer.
|
||||
|
||||
- When commenting on an issue, try to include suggestions for how the author
|
||||
could fix it. This not only helps the author to understand and fix the issue,
|
||||
it also deepens and improves your understanding of the topic.
|
||||
|
||||
- Reviews do not need to exclusively point out problems. Feel free to "think out
|
||||
loud" in your review: describe how you read & understood a complex section of
|
||||
a patch, ask a question about something that confused you, point out something
|
||||
you found exceptionally well-written, etc. In particular, uplifting feedback
|
||||
goes a long way towards encouraging contributors to participate more actively
|
||||
in the Git community.
|
||||
|
||||
==== Performing your review
|
||||
- Provide your review comments per-patch in a plaintext "Reply-All" email to the
|
||||
relevant patch. Comments should be made inline, immediately below the relevant
|
||||
section(s).
|
||||
|
||||
- You may find that the limited context provided in the patch diff is sometimes
|
||||
insufficient for a thorough review. In such cases, you can review patches in
|
||||
your local tree by either applying patches with linkgit:git-am[1] or checking
|
||||
out the associated branch from https://github.com/gitster/git once the series
|
||||
is tracked there.
|
||||
|
||||
- Large, complicated patch diffs are sometimes unavoidable, such as when they
|
||||
refactor existing code. If you find such a patch difficult to parse, try
|
||||
reviewing the diff produced with the `--color-moved` and/or
|
||||
`--ignore-space-change` options.
|
||||
|
||||
- If a patch is long, you are encouraged to delete parts of it that are
|
||||
unrelated to your review from the email reply. Make sure to leave enough
|
||||
context for readers to understand your comments!
|
||||
|
||||
- If you cannot complete a full review of a series all at once, consider letting
|
||||
the author know (on- or off-list) if/when you plan to review the rest of the
|
||||
series.
|
||||
|
||||
Completing a review
|
||||
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
||||
Once each patch of a series is reviewed, the author (and/or other contributors)
|
||||
may discuss the review(s). This may result in no changes being applied, or the
|
||||
author will send a new version of their patch(es).
|
||||
|
||||
After a series is rerolled in response to your or others' review, make sure to
|
||||
re-review the updates. If you are happy with the state of the patch series,
|
||||
explicitly indicate your approval (typically with a reply to the latest
|
||||
version's cover letter). Optionally, you can let the author know that they can
|
||||
add a "Reviewed-by: <you>" trailer if they resubmit the reviewed patch verbatim
|
||||
in a later iteration of the series.
|
||||
|
||||
Finally, subsequent "What's cooking" emails may explicitly ask whether a
|
||||
reviewed topic is ready for merging to the `next` branch (typically phrased
|
||||
"Will merge to \'next\'?"). You can help the maintainer and author by responding
|
||||
with a short description of the state of your (and others', if applicable)
|
||||
review, including the links to the relevant thread(s).
|
||||
|
||||
Terminology
|
||||
-----------
|
||||
nit: ::
|
||||
Denotes a small issue that should be fixed, such as a typographical error
|
||||
or mis-alignment of conditions in an `if()` statement.
|
||||
|
||||
aside: ::
|
||||
optional: ::
|
||||
non-blocking: ::
|
||||
Indicates to the reader that the following comment should not block the
|
||||
acceptance of the patch or series. These are typically recommendations
|
||||
related to code organization & style, or musings about topics related to
|
||||
the patch in question, but beyond its scope.
|
||||
|
||||
s/<before>/<after>/::
|
||||
Shorthand for "you wrote <before>, but I think you meant <after>," usually
|
||||
for misspellings or other typographical errors. The syntax is a reference
|
||||
to "substitute" command commonly found in Unix tools such as `ed`, `sed`,
|
||||
`vim`, and `perl`.
|
||||
|
||||
cover letter::
|
||||
The "Patch 0" of a multi-patch series. This email describes the
|
||||
high-level intent and structure of the patch series to readers on the
|
||||
Git mailing list. It is also where the changelog notes and range-diff of
|
||||
subsequent versions are provided by the author.
|
||||
+
|
||||
On single-patch submissions, cover letter content is typically not sent as a
|
||||
separate email. Instead, it is inserted between the end of the patch's commit
|
||||
message (after the `---`) and the beginning of the diff.
|
||||
|
||||
#leftoverbits::
|
||||
Used by either an author or a reviewer to describe features or suggested
|
||||
changes that are out-of-scope of a given patch or series, but are relevant
|
||||
to the topic for the sake of discussion.
|
||||
|
||||
See Also
|
||||
--------
|
||||
link:MyFirstContribution.html[MyFirstContribution]
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue
Block a user