Custom code review process and tools based on Rational team concert

Introduction

IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC) is a software development environment on the IBM rational next-generation collaboration platform for software delivery technology-jazz platform, which enables agile development through integrated work item tracking, source control, and configurable process management. Process management is an important feature that distinguishes it from the generic version management tool, and it focuses more on integrating the management of code into the development lifecycle and team collaboration of the entire code.

This article has customized a set of code review processes based on RTC. This process can help moderator management review tasks, assign review tasks to multiple Reviewer, and track issues found in code reviews. This review process is suitable for managing the review process in the project and improving the quality of code review.

In addition, the Rational Team Concert (RTC) provides developers with a convenient and extensible Java API that expands the RTC with a customized code review process and develops code review tools based on multiple code base (CVS and RTC). It is used to automatically detect and generate code changesets, associate them with the corresponding work items, and then submit the review tasks, thus greatly simplifying the user's operations while improving the developer's collaborative work efficiency. This tool is developed based on the Eclipse platform and the RTC Plain Java API.

Scene Introduction

Code review is a very important step in the project development process, the excellent code review process can greatly improve the quality of project code, before the code is submitted to check the defects of the Code, so as to reduce the cost of development testing. However, there are many challenges in code review of existing complex projects.

For some existing projects, most of the project code is stored in CVS, SVN, and other version management tools, can not be in the RTC to form code comparisons, and can not be associated with code review items;

Because most of the project itself is very complex, each module's development team has its own Leader, for a function point or algorithm changes often require the participation of each team Leader, or to designate some technical experts to participate, the RTC itself with a single drop-down box can not meet a number of reviewers of the scene;

Since many teams are across regions or time zones, it is not realistic to conduct code reviews specifically at the code review meeting, where team members from different locations can be added to the code review entry, and the RTC's own mail reminders feature enables team members to receive code review notifications in real time, On the other hand, you can decide whether to conduct a code review meeting according to the type of review in the code review item.

Most of the existing code review processes lack the ability to record, state track, and close the issues that are reviewed, to generate review progress and code quality metrics reports to project managers and quality managers for overall project quality management.

Customization of the code review process and the work items required

The RTC has a strong, flexible process customization capability that allows development teams to tailor their own new development processes to the team's own characteristics, or make the necessary modifications to existing development processes. Based on the particularity of team business development, the author has customized the universal code review process, unlike the RTC default process management process, the custom code review process is more applicable to the team, especially the multinational team's code review process, and with the help of the RTC real-time collaboration function greatly reduce the team error probability, Enables different roles to collaborate with one another in a real-time work environment to ensure high quality code delivery. The review process is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Review process diagram

As you can see from the flowchart, the entire review process requires three roles, including (TA) developers, (moderator) intermediaries, (Reviewer) reviewers. The specific code review process is as follows:

After the developer has modified the code for a PTR or PCR, it extracts the PTR or PCR-related code into a code changeset (ChangeSet) with the help of the Code review tool, and creates a code review task item (review Task). The code changeset is submitted to the broker (moderator) as a child domain of the task item, while the broker receives a reminder message to handle the code review task item;

Moderator assigns the task item to different code reviewers depending on the nature of the PTR or PCR, the module, and so on, and the reviewers also receive email reminders to handle the task;

The code reviewer opens the task item and reviews the code changesets that came with it, and, during the review process, you can create the problem task item and attach it to the code review task item as a child domain if the reviewer needs to make recommendations for the code change set;

The developer receives a reminder message from the issue task item and modifies it according to the recommendations of the reviewer, and then uses the Code review tool to extract the modified code into a code-change set that associates it with the code Review task item associated with the issue, thereby improving the quality of the code;

If the problem associated with the current code task item has been resolved, and all reviewers agree to the code change, the broker is responsible for closing the code review task item;

As you can see from the above description, the review process involves two custom task items: Code Review Task items (Review Task) and Problem task item (Issue Task). The following steps allow you to create the task items that are required during the review process in the RTC:

Define a new work item type with attributes

In the Project area directory, select Process Configuration > Project configuration> Configuration data> workitems> Types and Attributes;

Figure 2. Create a task item in the Rational team concert

To create a new type of work item required by the code review process, click Add to open the Add Type dialog window as shown in Figure 3 so that you can provide a name and ID for the new work item type;