Software Engineer: How to request a code review?

When working in a code repository, you might need to make code changes. These code changes can be addition or deletion of code. In order for the code changes to be committed to the code repository. We need to follow best practices which help us to avoid problems that are commonly occurring in the development and maintenance of a code repository.

Often time’s code review requests are incomplete. It can be due to several factors.

Some common factors that I have come across are the following,

• The code review requester has not read the coding guidelines and pull request guidelines of the code repository.
• The code review requester did not get training on how to create pull requests.
• The code review requester lacks information on the expected outcome of the code changes.
• The code review requester does not spend time and has no interest or lack of interest in working on the code repository.
• The code review requester is a contractor who has other tasks that need immediate attention and isn’t concerned about the code repository where the code changes committed to a development branch.

There might be other reasons that have led to the outcome of a poorly written commit messages and poor quality of code changes.

Nevertheless, what might be the reasons. We need to always keep in mind that the code reviewer is spending considerable amount of time in reading the code changes and trying to understand the code changes. We need to have empathy and professionalism towards our actions.

Let’s look at the flow on how to request a code review?

1. As an author of the code changes, you become a code review requester.
2. You organise the code changes in a development branch.
3. You cross-check the code changes if the changes made are following the coding guidelines.
4. Commit changes to a development branch following the pull request guidelines.
5. Create a pull request.
6. Check the contents of the pull request and make sure there is enough information for the code reviewer to understand the code changes.
7. Depending on the methodologies followed (For example, Extreme programming or Agile programming.). You need to inform the code reviewer on how to test the code changes in the pull request.

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