Reviewers' Guide

The following is a guide for reviewers of code submitted for Bugzilla. The review process is designed to remove problems from a patch before it is checked into the Bugzilla tree, to improve the quality of Bugzilla.

Becoming a Reviewer

Reviewers are blessed by the project leader as reviewers. If you wish to become one, email the project leader.

Before becoming a reviewer, you will generally need to have a demonstrated experience of providing reasonable Bugzilla patches. You should also understand the contents of this guide and the Developers’ Guide, and be able to demonstrate this if necessary.

Although Bugzilla has a project leader with ultimate authority, the project mostly operates on consensus. The reviewers drive the project - they are the primary developers, the discussers, and the decision makers. They are generally also the “core” developers of Bugzilla, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

As such, reviewers are emissaries for the project, and should act reasonably to those who are not reviewers, even when those people are not acting reasonably themselves. Unfortunately, people can take the opinion of one person as that of the entire project, and that is not in anyone’s best interest. In particular, this means trying to be civil, as well as trying to have a thick skin. If someone is to be given the proverbial finger, that should be on the consensus of the reviewers.

Review Process

Beginning The Process

When a patch is ready to be reviewed, a “review” request is raised, usually by the patch author.

Review

At some stage, the first review will be done. The review will either be positive (meaning the reviewer is happy with the patch) or negative (meaning they aren’t). Typically a negative review will be accompanied by reason(s).

A negative review is generally the end of the process, and a new patch will generally be expected which takes into account the reasons for the negative review. Occasionally, a negative review might be rescinded and turned into a positive one, if the negative review reasons were judged to be incorrect.

Upon a positive review, the reviewer may elect to ask for a subsequent review, by raising a further review request on another person, if they feel the patch is complex or significant enough to warrant special attention.

In particular, a security issue must have at least two reviews. It is expected, however, that most patches won’t need a second review.

Reviews should only be done by blessed reviewers. Reviewers may not review a patch they wrote or cowrote. An exception to this is if the patch is a backport to a stable branch, in which case the original author should be a reviewer if they wasn’t the backporter.

If the reviewer feels unqualified to review a part of a patch, they can delegate part of the review to another party who need not be a blessed reviewer.

If the reviewer feels unqualified to review any of the patch, and feels there is a better blessed reviewer, they should attempt to notify a better reviewer.

If the reviewer feels unqualified to review any of the patch, but feels there is no better blessed reviewer, they should review as well as possible, and can delegate a full review to another party who need not be a blessed reviewer.

When delegating, the responsibility for updating the request statuses is in the blessed reviewer’s hands.

Overriding Reviews

Normally, you may not override the review of another reviewer. That is, you can’t clear their review flag and add your own. You are free to add your review flag as an additional flag, though.

There are two exceptions ot this:

Those two exceptions should be used extremely sparingly, though. Reviewers are the authority on reviews.

Approval

Once reviewing is complete, the patch needs to be approved. The final reviewer should raise an “approval” request.

Approval is done by the project leader or blessed delegate. The purpose of approval is for the project leader to be able to keep control of the entire Bugzilla product, to ensure similar, bad or conflicting features aren’t introduced. Approval does not usually involve in depth review of code, although nothing prohibits this.

If approval isn’t granted, the approver might decide to ask for a rereview, a new patch, or resolve the bug entirely without checkin.

Checking In

Once the patch is reviewed and approved, it needs to be checked in. If the bug owner has checkin authority, they should check the patch in, otherwise any other reviewer should.

Documentation Review

The review process above is for changes that can break Bugzilla.  Things that can’t, ie documentation changes, follow different rules.

Checking In & Out

If you are a reviewer and wish to have checkin access, then you need to follow the instructions on the mozilla.org checkin authority page.  When you file a bug, CC the project leader who will decide whether to vouch for you.  Be sure to specify when filing the bug that you are applying for Webtools access only, and so do not need a super-reviewer.

Once you have checkin access, you need git software to check in and out. See your git documentation for more information about using git.

To get a copy of the Bugzilla source code, run this command:

git clone https://git.mozilla.org/bugzilla/bugzilla.git bugzilla

However, if you want to be able to check in, you must instead use a different path. Git’s authentication is based on your ssh key, so as long as your account has an ssh key on file, it will know who you are. Everyone uses the same username.

Your command would be:
git clone ssh://[email protected]/bugzilla/bugzilla.git bugzilla

How To Review

Reviewers should test the patch as well as visually review it.

Although some aspects of reviewing a patch are formulaic, the process is by no means completely so.  Reviewers should consider all aspects of the patch.

The next sections are checklists that detail some of the things reviewers should look for.  Because they are by no means a complete list of things to check, it is recommended they are not consulted until after the review is otherwise complete.

General Review Checklist

CGI Review Checklist

Template Review Checklist