Code Review process

Question

I'm looking for a light-weight code review process. A couple of requirements, the reviewer must be able to do the review alone at the time of his/her choosing (not tied to check-ins), the reviewer must be able to easily find the target code, the review has to leave some document showing what was reviewed. I know there are tools available for code review but I work in a very ridig environment and introducing new tools is not an option.

One idea I've been thinking about is to create a new Visual Studio Task List token called REVIEW, and use it to mark the code that needs reviewing.

Something like,

// REVIEW doe_john: New method, not sure about the exception.

Then we would add a Review workitem in TFS (we're using the CMM template).

Another possibility, which I would actually prefer, would be to have developers create a TFS Review workitem and add links to code to it, but I don't know if this is possible. Obviously you can add a link to a file, but I'd like to have a link to a particular method.

Answer 1

I haven't tried it myself, but a number of my friends have recommended Crucible. I've always used a process where reviewers mark up the code and then meet to discuss what they found. It works well, but the meetings can be hard to schedule and it's easy to get bogged down in minutiae. Crucible seems to support the same sort of process, but without the need for the meeting.

Answer 2

Here's some good info: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68835/code-review

I liked:

1. Explain context of the change I am reviewing.
2. Show me your unit tests.
3. Show me your code.
4. Show me zero StyleCop warnings and zero FXCop violations.
5. Show me all this building on the Continuous Integration server.

Very nice and lightweight.

(BTW odd that we share the same name...)