When submitting a patch, the primary concerns of individual developers are “How can I maximize the chances of my patch being approved, and minimize the time it takes for this to happen?” In principle, code review is a transparent
process that aims to assess qualities of the patch by their technical merits and in a timely manner; however, in practice
the execution of this process can be affected by a variety of factors, some of which are external to the technical content of
the patch itself. In this paper, we describe an empirical study of the code review process for WebKit, a large, open source project; we replicate the impact of previously studied factors such as patch size, priority, and component and extend
these studies by investigating organizational (the company) and personal dimensions (reviewer load and activity, patch writer
experience) on code review response time and outcome. Our
approach uses a reverse engineered model of the patch submission
process and extracts key information from the issue tracking
and code review systems. Our findings suggest that these nontechnical
factors can significantly impact code review outcomes.
Index Terms—Code review, non-technical factors, personal and
organizational aspects, WebKit, open source software
When submitting a patch, the primary concerns of individual developers are “How can I maximize the chances of my patch being approved, and minimize the time it takes for this to happen?” In principle, code review is a transparentprocess that aims to assess qualities of the patch by their technical merits and in a timely manner; however, in practicethe execution of this process can be affected by a variety of factors, some of which are external to the technical content ofthe patch itself. In this paper, we describe an empirical study of the code review process for WebKit, a large, open source project; we replicate the impact of previously studied factors such as patch size, priority, and component and extendthese studies by investigating organizational (the company) and personal dimensions (reviewer load and activity, patch writerexperience) on code review response time and outcome. Ourapproach uses a reverse engineered model of the patch submissionprocess and extracts key information from the issue trackingand code review systems. Our findings suggest that these nontechnicalfactors can significantly impact code review outcomes.Index Terms—Code review, non-technical factors, personal andorganizational aspects, WebKit, open source software
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..
