Code Review¶

We use Pull Requests on GitHub for code reviews and merging proposed changes.

Pull requests let you tell others about changes you’ve pushed to a GitHub repository. Once a pull request is sent, we can review the set of changes, discuss potential modifications, and you can even push follow-up commits if necessary (without having to close and re-open the pull request).

What we look for¶

in a pull request¶

Descriptive title
Summary describing the changes
Points to and from the correct branches
- From your development branch to Freeseer’s master branch
Reference any related issues or resources

in the code¶

Code should follow our Style Guide
Code is well documented
- Documentation should also exist in our online documentation for any new features
Logic of the code makes sense
Code is efficient and readable
Code is modular
- Similar code should be put in functions
- Functions should be small and focus on one thing
Your code is thoroughly documented and uses docstrings where appropriate
Your branch can be merged cleanly into master
- No merge conflicts
- Your branch includes the latest commits from master (rebase to avoid merge commits)
Includes unit tests for the new code
All unit tests pass

in the commits¶

Each commit should represent one type of change
Commit messages are as descriptive as possible
Commit messages follow our formatting guidelines
Squash related commits into a single commit

Tips¶

Open a Pull Request as early as possible

Pull requests are a great way to start a conversation of a feature or a work in progress, so send one as soon as possible—even before you are finished with the code. Your team can comment on the feature as it evolves, instead of providing all their feedback at the very end.
Pull Requests work branch to branch

If you have push access to Freeseer/freeseer, you don’t need to fork it to work on a new feature. Create your topic branch on Freeseer/freeseer instead, then make a pull request in the same repository.
A Pull Request doesn’t have to be merged

Pull requests are easy to make and a great way to get feedback and track progress on a branch. But some ideas don’t make it. It’s okay to close a pull request without merging.
Anyone can review code

Reviewing code isn’t exclusive to active contributors. Anyone is welcome and encouraged to review code—the more the better!