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Lucas Vilaboim for villageboim

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Basic guide to code review

A software developer will have their code reviewed and will review others' code practically every day, and even with this repetition, sometimes we forget a point or two.

This is a guide with basic points to be checked in a code review, feel free to use/modify/improve it, in your company or open-source project.

For the requester

  1. Write good commit messages (following the Conventional Commits is a good start);
  2. Review your pull request before opening it, make sure you haven't forgotten any debugger or typing error;
  3. Keep your pull request small, this makes it easy to review and less harmful to the business;
  4. Ensure that your pull request passes tests, linters, and builds, and has no conflicts;
  5. Write a good description;
  6. Comment on your own pull request if any piece of code is not obvious;
  7. Wait for the reviewer to finish before starting to fix;
  8. Choose the right reviewers (example: someone who has already worked on the same part of the code);

For the reviewer

  1. Be kind;
  2. Be a thorough person (this document can help you);
  3. Seek context. Read the pull request description, the ticket, even check the screens (if any);
  4. Make sure you've set aside the necessary time to understand and make the best code review you can;
  5. Respect the context. If a pull request fixes a bug, don't ask the developer to refactor the entire component, this can be addressed in the future;
  6. Make it clear that you are doing the review, comment Reviewing when starting, and Reviewed when finished.

This guide is constantly evolving 😊

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