Code review for Scilab code management

[Sylvestre Ledru]

Hello guys,

For the last few weeks, we have been testing a code review system [1]:
http://codereview.scilab.org/
Basically, that means that all the new source code of Scilab should be
reviewed and tested by at least an other person.
We are currently using Gerrit [2] which is a tool developed by Google
for their internal needs. They released it as a free software project
[3] less than a year ago.

We used to do this task in the past but it was informal and painful
(watching the git/svn log, watching the modifications, testing and
sending emails to the author) and we hope improving the overall quality
of the code included into Scilab and match on every commit the
requirements [4].

We also wrote some extended coding styles for C [5] and Scilab [6] in
the Scilab code.

Finally, we will probably ask students of the Google Summer of Code 2010
to go through the Code Review system for their codes (into Scilab or for
external modules).

As usual, don't hesitate if you have any questions,
Sylvestre


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_review
[2] http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/
[3] http://lwn.net/Articles/359489/
[4] http://wiki.scilab.org/Expectations_in_the_source_code_modifications
[5]
http://wiki.scilab.org/Code_Conventions_for_the_C_Programming_Language
[6]
http://wiki.scilab.org/Code_Conventions_for_the_Scilab_Programming_Language