Options for code reviews with Git

August 18, 2014 [git, Programming]

We're thinking about switching to Git for my work, and I want to be confident we can still support good code reviews if we make the switch.

I am a big fan of in-person reviews, and for that, git difftool is enough but sometimes you need to do it asynchronously, and then you need a tool or a process or something.

Here are the options as I see them so far (please comment if you know others I should consider):

  1. Emailing patches. Git has git format-patch and git bundle that allow creating a file containing changes that can be sent by email or message. These can be reviewed as patches or applied to the working tree and reviewed in context.
  2. Feature branch and pull request. Devs to push their changes to a branch in a shared repo and send an email or message asking a colleague to pull the branch. The reviewer looks at the changes in the repo or pulls them, then either sends back comments, or merges the branch into their own and delivers to the master branch.
  3. Tools. There are several extra tools that sit in front of Git and deliver changes when they are reviewed. These include: Gerrit, Critic, Review Board.

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