Code review: pull requests versus independent review

[Nick Coghlan]

On 28 January 2015 at 23:06, Thomas De Schampheleire
<patrickdepinguin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Currently, reviewing a set of commits in Kallithea is based on the
> concept of a pull request. A code author can create a pull request for
> a set of (descendant) commits so that people can review it.
> When Kallithea is not used for actually performing the pull/push to
> the main repo, the pull request concept is actually not the best fit.
>
> One particular case where it fails is when not all commits you want
> reviewed are descendants of one another. Maybe there is a commit in
> the middle that is irrelevant, or relevant but you do not expect
> reviewed by that set of people.
>
> In this case, being able to cherry-pick the commits part of the review
> is more useful. Given the Kallithea way of handling reviews (which is
> mostly coupled to individual changesets without them being coupled to
> the corresponding pull request), it wouldn't be that hard to add an
> extra concept in Kallithea: that of 'Review request'.
> Such review request could contain an arbitrary number and combination
> of commits, without mandatory parent-child relation, but is otherwise
> very similar to the current pull request concept.
>
> What do you think of this idea?

What would be the expected outcome of such a review request, and how
do you see it fitting into a team's workflow?

With a pull request, the expected outcome is clear (merged or
rejected), and if fits clearly into a workflow as a gating mechanism
for inclusion into the main line of development.

Additionaly, how would such a review request differ from cherry
picking the commits of interest to a new branch and including them in
a new pull request?

Finally, if Kallithea is not the "repo of record" and someone just
wants a standalone code review tool, wouldn't it make more sense to
use something like ReviewBoard instead?

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia