Rietveld: a new code review tool [LWN.net]

From:		"Guido van Rossum" <guido-AT-python.org>
To:		python-dev-AT-python.org, python-3000-AT-python.org
Subject:		Invitation to try out open source code review tool
Date:		Thu, 1 May 2008 09:41:07 -0700
Message-ID:		<ca471dc20805010941k1f756fcax91e6f34fb72435fd@mail.gmail.com>
Archive-link:		Article, Thread

Some of you may have seen a video recorded in November 2006 where I
showed off Mondrian, a code review tool that I was developing for
Google (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMql3Di4Kgc). I've always hoped
that I could release Mondrian as open source, but it was not to be:
due to its popularity inside Google, it became more and more tied to
proprietary Google infrastructure like Bigtable, and it remained
limited to Perforce, the commercial revision control system most used
at Google.

What I'm announcing now is the next best thing: an code review tool
for use with Subversion, inspired by Mondrian and (soon to be)
released as open source. Some of the code is even directly derived
from Mondrian. Most of the code is new though, written using Django
and running on Google App Engine.

I'm inviting the Python developer community to try out the tool on the
web for code reviews. I've added a few code reviews already, but I'm
hoping that more developers will upload at least one patch for review
and invite a reviewer to try it out.

To try it out, go here:

    http://codereview.appspot.com

Please use the Help link in the top right to read more on how to use
the app. Please sign in using your Google Account (either a Gmail
address or a non-Gmail address registered with Google) to interact
more with the app (you need to be signed in to create new issues and
to add comments to existing issues).

Don't hesitate to drop me a note with feedback -- note though that
there are a few known issues listed at the end of the Help page. The
Help page is really a wiki, so feel free to improve it!

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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Rietveld: a new code review tool

Posted May 5, 2008 20:12 UTC (Mon) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link]

Anyone compared this with Review Board yet? RB looks a lot flashier and appears to have some
quite useful functionality, wheras this looks fairly basic.

Rietveld: a new code review tool

Posted May 6, 2008 7:25 UTC (Tue) by Wummel (subscriber, #7591) [Link]

I wonder why they did not use or improve the existing Review Board implementation (for example with a summer of code project, or directly) and are instead making a new solution.
Perhaps they wanted to use the new Google App Engine, and porting RB to that would have been too difficult.

What kind of impontant functionality is not there ?

Posted May 6, 2008 9:04 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Just curious. I see that RB does syntax highlighting, while Rietveld does not. Also JSON API. Something else? "Flashier" is good if you want to catch attention, but not so great for real work, but missing functionality is important...

As for "why to reinvent the wheel"... Mondrian (Rietveld is open-source fork of Mondrian) and Review Board were developed more-or-less in parallel... Just look at Review Board announce here and note this line: "We started development on this shortly before Mondrian was announced, and thought “Maybe we can just use Mondrian!” Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be open source, and wouldn’t integrate well into our setup anyway. So development of Review Board was still justified".