Re: [jgit-dev] JGit Code Review - Report

[Jonathan Nieder <jrn@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Enrico,

Enrico Fregnan wrote:

> Dear JGit developers,
>
> I am Enrico, a researcher at the University of Zurich and I am studying how to evaluate the code review process to understand how it could be improved.
>
> I created a tool that analyzes the changes that happen during a review on Gerrit, to measure the effects of code review on code and understand which kinds changes reviewers pay attention to.
>
> For example, are you aware that the majority of the changes happened during a code review in the last year in your project involve documentation issues?
>
> You will find this and more data about your project at the following link:
>
> https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5168478/Code-review-changes-report-JGit
>
> The link contains the report and some questions we would like to ask you about it.

Here's a few more details from private discussion:

| The link attached contains a report of our findings on the code
review process of JGit. We analysed which kind of changes happen
during a review, after a developer submits the first patch.
|
| We hope this information might offer some interesting insights to
improve your code review process. For example, noticing that much
effort is spent on fixing styling issue might lead to some rethinking
of the code review policies of the project.
|
| Of course, this is just a first step towards our goal of creating a
code review analytics tool that is able to give a complete summary of
what happens on Gerrit.
|
| You can find some graphs and information in the report. The report
is on survey Gizmo so you can give us some feedback (which would be
much appreciated) if you want, but don’t feel obliged to.
| The main goal of the survey attached is to understand if the
information already present in our tool is useful and can spark some
further reflections or what and how we need to improve.

Some initial thoughts:

1. I like your focus on changes to code that happened as a result of
review. This provides a concrete way to measure one of the effects of
code review. (See "Why Code Review?" at
https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/#_about_gerrit
for a description of a few of the other effects, such as knowledge
transfer.)
2. I am not sure I understand the distinction being made between
evolvability and understandability or readability.
3. Is the code you are using for these analytics available somewhere
we can look at?

Thanks,
Jonathan