Improving the new Plastic Code Review system: Part III

Improving the new Plastic Code Review system: Part III

Wednesday, November 06, 2019 María Barrios Carrasco code review 0 Comments

Here we are again to show you the latest in the Code Review system.

In case you missed them, there are two previous posts (here and here) where we started to summarize the improvements in the Code Review system that we are releasing periodically.

In this blogpost, you are going to see what are the new available features in the Code Review. Remember that your feedback is more than welcome!

The new Code Review system is now enabled by default. Download 8.0.16.3708 or later.

How to resolve pending code review requests from the Pending changes view

(Release 8.0.16.3594)

The Code Review system allows the reviewer to request changes to the developer. Then, the developer can set those changes as resolved using pre-defined text in the checkin comment.

We added a dropdown button next to the checkin comment textbox:

When the developer selects a change, the checkin comment text is automatically filled and, after checking-in your changes, the change will be marked as applied in the changeset:

Showing the requested changes as "Done"

(Release 8.0.16.3594)

If you apply the requested changes in a code review while having the Code Review window opened...

... the window will be updated correctly showing the requested changes as "Done", and the new changesets created as well:

Default code review title

(Release 8.0.16.3594)

The Code Review now always use the reviewed object in the title.

For examples:

Review of branch /main/scm15425 - Refactor FileSystem.cs
Review of changeset 88 - Improve performance in tree filtering

And also, we improved the alignment of titles and edit boxes in the header of the review.

Usability improvements code review window layout

(Release 8.0.16.3606)

• The comments and summary panels are now collapsible in order to allow the user to increase the available size of the diff viewer.
  
• The summary panel is displayed as collapsed when there are no changes or questions to show.
• When the changes and questions lists are empty, we display an empty state message, instead of the empty list.
  
• The comment list will only appear when there are comments (old legacy review comments) to show. Note that the new Code Review system is designed to encourage users to use only 'Changes or Questions'.

Code Review help

(Release 8.0.16.3621)

Now you can get some help about the Code Review. This help explains how to do a great review and to learn how the new Code Review system works.

Now you'll see how to add comments, add questions, request changes, apply or close a change request...

The help button is placed in the right top corner of the code review window:

Improvements in navigation

(Release 8.0.16.3673)

When a requested change was applied, if you double-clicked it, it navigated to the changeset where it was applied. But you couldn't navigate to the comment itself anymore.

We changed that behavior so that, if you double-click the comment, you navigate to it. And, if the requested change is applied, you can navigate to the changeset where it was applied by clicking on its status.

María Barrios Carrasco

I'm in charge of the documentation area and the one to let you know the news about our products: Plastic SCM, SemanticMerge and gmaster.
I started my degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Burgos and finished my studies at the University of Valladolid.
I love doing handmade crafts, going for a walk and for tapas 😋.
You can reach me at @maria13mbc.