Code Reviews

Developers working on CSE projects should conduct peer code reviews on every pull request (or check-in to a shared branch).

Goals

Code reviews is a way to have a conversation about the code where participants will:

Improve code quality by identifying and removing defects before they can be introduced into shared code branches.
Grow by learning from each other about unfamiliar design patterns or languages among other topics, and even break some bad habits.
Develop a shared understanding of the project's code.

Table of contents

Process Guidance: General
- Pull Requests
- Qualified PRs
  - Reflect well-defined, concise tasks
  - Compact in content
- Guidelines
  - SLAs for code reviews
  - Manage tasks pending for review
    - Customize AzDO task boards
  - Leverage code review tools
- Measuring code review process
Process Guidance: Authors
- Add relevant reviewers
  - Customize Reviewers Policy
- Address comments
  - Resolve if change has been made
  - Provide reason for "won't fix"
  - Discuss comments in the review
- Track progress
Process Guidance: Reviewer
- Focus
  - Correctness of business logic
  - Correctness of tests
  - Readability and maintainability
  - Checklist of common errors
- General guidance
- First design pass
- Code quality pass
Evidence and Measures
- Evidence
  - Branch policies
  - Builds include linters and run unit tests
  - Bug work items
  - Update code review checklist
  - Improve skills as code reviewers
- Measures
  - Collect metrics e.g. Defect Removal Efficiency, Time metrics, Lines of Code
  - Manual tracking vs. AzDO dasboards
Language Specific Guidance
- Bash
- C#
- Go
- Java
- JavaScript and TypeScript
- Markdown
- Python
- Terraform
FAQ
Resources