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# Code Review Guidelines
This guide contains advice and best practices for performing code review, and
having your code reviewed.
All merge requests for GitLab CE and EE, whether written by a GitLab team member
or a volunteer contributor, must go through a code review process to ensure the
code is effective, understandable, and maintainable.
Any developer can, and is encouraged to, perform code review on merge requests
of colleagues and contributors. However, the final decision to accept a merge
request is up to one of our merge request "endbosses", denoted on the
[team page](https://about.gitlab.com/team).
## Everyone
- Accept that many programming decisions are opinions. Discuss tradeoffs, which
you prefer, and reach a resolution quickly.
- Ask questions; don't make demands. ("What do you think about naming this
`:user_id`?")
- Ask for clarification. ("I didn't understand. Can you clarify?")
- Avoid selective ownership of code. ("mine", "not mine", "yours")
- Avoid using terms that could be seen as referring to personal traits. ("dumb",
"stupid"). Assume everyone is attractive, intelligent, and well-meaning.
- Be explicit. Remember people don't always understand your intentions online.
- Be humble. ("I'm not sure - let's look it up.")
- Don't use hyperbole. ("always", "never", "endlessly", "nothing")
- Be careful about the use of sarcasm. Everything we do is public; what seems
like good-natured ribbing to you and a long-time colleague might come off as
mean and unwelcoming to a person new to the project.
- Consider one-on-one chats or video calls if there are too many "I didn't
understand" or "Alternative solution:" comments. Post a follow-up comment
summarizing one-on-one discussion.
## Having your code reviewed
Please keep in mind that code review is a process that can take multiple
iterations, and reviewers may spot things later that they may not have seen the
first time.
- The first reviewer of your code is _you_. Before you perform that first push
of your shiny new branch, read through the entire diff. Does it make sense?
Did you include something unrelated to the overall purpose of the changes? Did
you forget to remove any debugging code?
- Be grateful for the reviewer's suggestions. ("Good call. I'll make that
change.")
- Don't take it personally. The review is of the code, not of you.
- Explain why the code exists. ("It's like that because of these reasons. Would
it be more clear if I rename this class/file/method/variable?")
- Extract unrelated changes and refactorings into future merge requests/issues.
- Seek to understand the reviewer's perspective.
- Try to respond to every comment.
- Push commits based on earlier rounds of feedback as isolated commits to the
branch. Do not squash until the branch is ready to merge. Reviewers should be
able to read individual updates based on their earlier feedback.
## Reviewing code
Understand why the change is necessary (fixes a bug, improves the user
experience, refactors the existing code). Then:
- Try to be thorough in your reviews to reduce the number of iterations.
- Communicate which ideas you feel strongly about and those you don't.
- Identify ways to simplify the code while still solving the problem.
- Offer alternative implementations, but assume the author already considered
them. ("What do you think about using a custom validator here?")
- Seek to understand the author's perspective.
- If you don't understand a piece of code, _say so_. There's a good chance
someone else would be confused by it as well.
- After a round of line notes, it can be helpful to post a summary note such as
"LGTM :thumbsup:", or "Just a couple things to address."
- Avoid accepting a merge request before the build succeeds. Of course, "Merge
When Build Succeeds" (MWBS) is fine.
- If you set the MR to "Merge When Build Succeeds", you should take over
subsequent revisions for anything that would be spotted after that.
## Credits
Largely based on the [thoughtbot code review guide].
[thoughtbot code review guide]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/guides/tree/master/code-review
---
[Return to Development documentation](README.md)
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