Reviews/R4E/User Guide

Getting Started

Overview

Review for Eclipse (R4E) is a tool to facilitate reviews of text files associated to an Eclipse Project and a version control system. The main focus of R4E is the review of Source Code and eventually the review of Data models based on EMF.

R4E aims to support multiple version control systems (via Eclipse Team Providers). Egit is the one supported in the initial version.

Getting Started

Dependencies

• R4E installation requires the following plug-in
  • Git Team Provider 0.9.1 (or later)

R4E Configuration

R4E associates reviews via Review Groups, there can be as many review groups as needed. Once a group is defined, other users can work with the related reviews or add new ones by specifying its location under the workspace preferences.

Creating a Review Group

You will first need to create a Review Group to associate your reviews.

• Open the R4E Navigator View Window > Show View > R4E > Review Navigator

• Click the icon "Add a new Review Group"
• Select a shared folder location where team members have access and write permissions (i.e. Review Group shared folder)

Opening an Existing Review Group

• If a Review Group is already created, you need to define its shared location in your workspace preferences. Preferences > R4E
• Select the Review file ending with "_group_root.xrer"

Eclipse Project Configuration

• R4E can only operate with projects associated with Egit as team provider, The "EGit/User Guide" is the best place to find the information on how to create new git repositories, work with existing git repositories and importing Eclipse projects under and existing git repository into the Eclipse workspace.

"EGit/User Guide"

• Once the project is associated/connected to the Egit team provider the project will display the project name and associated branch between brackets.

Concepts

Review Group

A set of Reviews bundled together under the same directory and have a common factor determined by the user e.g. common Project, Product, Time Span, etc..

Review

• Entity which holds information and references to the Items under review, the participants, the findings (anomalies), status, etc..

Review Item

• There are three types of Review Items to be supported

Commit

• A commit to a version control system repository, representing the affected files (before and after modifications) also called base and target.

In this type of Review Item the base and target files are part of a commit in the version control system.

Resource

• This represents review items created by manually selecting a portion of the file (Resource) as the target for review.

Patch

Not supported just yet Will hold the references to the affected files plus a delta change, these type of review items will require the base file to be part of a commit within the version control system whereas the updated file many not have been committed to the version control system.

Review Anomaly

Any condition that deviates from expectations based on requirements specifications, design documents, user documents, standards, etc., or from someone's perceptions of experiences. Anomalies may be found during, but not limited to, the review, test, analysis, compilation, or use of software products or applicable documentation.

Tasks

Creating a Review

From the Review Navigator view, right click to open up the context menu

Creating a Review Item

There are two types of Review Items to add to an R4E Review

Creating a Resource Review Item

These types of items are created from the manual selection of a Workspace resource (i.e. File) or a portion of a resource (line ranges within a file).

• To create Resource review items for a whole file, right click a File on a Package Explorer, Navigator or Project View to see the menu in the following picture.
• To create Resource review items for a portion of a file, right click a line range selection on an editor or compare editor (spawned from R4E Navigator) to see the context menu in the following picture.

Creating a Commit Review Item

To create a commit review item, right click on a project attached to the Egit team provider (see Project Configuration) to access the context menu shown below.

The Last commit is proposed as the review item.

Creating an Anomaly

Similarly to Resource Review Items an anomaly can be created from a selected Resource or a portion of a resource.

Creating a Global Anomaly

Global anomalies are not specific to a Resource and the scope shall be described by the creator, the context menu for it is under the R4E Navigator -> Global Anomalies

Adding Comments to an existing Anomaly

Updating Review Elements