Automated Code Reviews: Everything to know about CODE REVIEW as a Beginner — Part 2
Hi everyone!
This article is going to be the next part of my previous article “Everything to know about CODE REVIEW as a Beginner — Part 1”. In that previous article I have given an introduction to code review — what is it, why do we need it, pros and cons of code review, common code review approaches and the nest practices of code review.
If you haven’t read it, I would suggest you first read that introductory article by clicking the link below and then continue with this one. Or if you already have a basic idea on what code review is, then you can continue reading this article.
What is an Automated Code Review? And why is it important?
Automated code review is a process of checking and analyzing the source code using specific software tools.
This tool tries to find the defects and vulnerabilities by checking the code against predefined set of rules and standards. This method comparatively requires lesser time and effort when compared to Manual Code Review. This kind of automated code review tools have the capability to automatically fix the detected bugs and guide the users on fixing it too.
Manual Code Reviews (MCR) vs Automated Code Reviews (ACR)
The basic difference between manual and automated code reviews is that the MCR is conducted by humans while ACR is done using a software tool. In the MCR process, developers have to go through the code line by line to find the issues therefore that developer must have expertise in the domain. But in ACR, source code is checked against a predefined set of rules and standards to find the issues or vulnerabilities
MCR requires more time and it’s a kind of a tiring process, since people have to check the code line by line manually. But if you use an efficient ACR tool, then it will review the code within a smaller period of time.
Deep analysis of business processes will be there in the MCR process which is lacking in the ACR since the ACR tool will only check your code against certain predefined criteria.
MCR seems a bit expensive when compared to ACR, because MCR requires a pool of highly skilled domain experts while ACR doesn’t require that many skilled people. The cost of an ACR software tool is much lesser when compared to the expenses you have to spend on the domain experts.
As a summary to this, both of these manual as well as automated code reviews have their own advantages and disadvantages. So we must accept the challenge of choosing the appropriate option for our work. Most companies these days move towards ACR while still some are happy with the MCR. I would say that a combination of both of these approaches would be ideal.
What are the things to check before choosing an Automated Code Review solution/tool?
There are a lot of tools available these days for this automated code review. Among them, not everything will suit your project. So it is your responsibility to choose the best suitable tool for your review.
Listed below are some of the important features that you should consider before choosing a tool for the automated code review:
- Check whether the tool is easy to use.
- Make sure that the tool supports the programming language and the IDE that you’re using.
- Should be more accurate.
- Better to choose a cloud hosted tool especially if your project needs the collaboration of different teams.
- Make sure that the tool is well documented — better to avoid less documented tools because you will be in trouble if you are stuck somewhere while documentation is also not there.
Some famous Automated Code Review Tools
Following are some of the famous code review tools that I came across. This list might miss a few tools and also note that I am not mentioning them in any ranking order.
- GitHub
- GitLab
- BitBucket
- Crucible
- Collaborator
- Gerrit
- Review Board
- CodeScene
- Visual Expert
- Veracode
Conclusion
Code Review process is really important for all the companies to maintain the quality of their source codes. Both the manual and automated code reviews have their own pros and cons, so it is the responsibility of the team or developer to choose the right method of code review for the project. Automated code review tools help people save their time and effort by quickly analyzing the code against a predefined set of rules. Not all the automated code review tools will be suitable for all kinds of projects, so make sure you’re checking basic things I mentioned above before choosing an automated code review tool for your project.
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Thank you.
