Abstract
Contemporary code review is a widespread practice used by software engineers to maintain high software quality and share project knowledge. However, conducting proper code review takes time and developers often have limited time for review. In this paper, we aim at investigating the information that reviewers need
to conduct a proper code review, to better understand this process and how research and tool support can make developers become more effective and efficient reviewers.
Previous work has provided evidence that a successful code review process is one in which reviewers and authors actively participate and collaborate. In these cases, the threads of discussions that are saved by code review tools are a precious source of information that can be later exploited for research and practice. In
this paper, we focus on this source of information as a way to gather reliable data on the aforementioned reviewers’ needs. We manually analyze 900 code review comments from three large open-source projects and organize them in categories by means of a card sort. Our results highlight the presence of seven
high-level information needs, such as knowing the uses of methods and variables declared/modified in the code under review. Based on these results we suggest ways in which future code review tools can better support collaboration and the reviewing task. Preprint [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1405894]. Data and
Materials [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1405902].
to conduct a proper code review, to better understand this process and how research and tool support can make developers become more effective and efficient reviewers.
Previous work has provided evidence that a successful code review process is one in which reviewers and authors actively participate and collaborate. In these cases, the threads of discussions that are saved by code review tools are a precious source of information that can be later exploited for research and practice. In
this paper, we focus on this source of information as a way to gather reliable data on the aforementioned reviewers’ needs. We manually analyze 900 code review comments from three large open-source projects and organize them in categories by means of a card sort. Our results highlight the presence of seven
high-level information needs, such as knowing the uses of methods and variables declared/modified in the code under review. Based on these results we suggest ways in which future code review tools can better support collaboration and the reviewing task. Preprint [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1405894]. Data and
Materials [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1405902].
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-27 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| Journal | ACM Proceedings on Human-Computer Interaction |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue number | CSCW |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2018 |
| Event | CSCW 2018: The 21st ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing - New York City's Hudson River (Jersey City), New Jersey, United States Duration: 3 Nov 2018 → 7 Nov 2018 Conference number: 21 http://cscw.acm.org/2018/ |
Bibliographical note
Acknowledgments: European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 642954Accepted author manuscript
Keywords
- code review
- information needs
- mining software repositories