5 reasons to use EGerrit - #1 – Comment directly from the language editor

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1, we are enumerating the top 5 features of the tool.

#1 - Comment directly from the language editor

When you are performing the review of a large change, the compare editor may no longer be satisfactory because you want to have multiple files opened, or because you want to see more information about the source code. Yet, you still want to be able to enter and see comments while you are in the regular editor (e.g. Java editor).

This is exactly what the EGerrit’s integration with the Eclipse markers let you do. When you checkout a review, a marker will be associated with each comment from the checked-out revision; and each file that is part of the review will feature a context menu to let you enter a new comment (see picture). Each marker created will be shown in the “Markers view” and will have associated quick-fixes letting you reply to the comment, or delete it if it is a draft.

This concludes our top 5 of EGerrit features, and we hope that you will take the time to try out the tool and provide us with feedback, and feature requests. Of course 1.1 is not the end, and we are steadily improving the tool by making the workflows smoother, and deepening the integrations. Our current release plan is to ship a new version of EGerrit with Neon.2 in December 2016, with Neon.3 in February 2017, and with Oxygen in June 2017. If you can’t wait for those, you can always get our latest I build from one of our repository.

Top 5 EGerrit features:

• Being in Eclipse
• Simple checkout
• In-place comments
• Compare against workspace
• Comment in the editor

5 reasons to use EGerrit - #2, Compare against workspace

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1, we are enumerating the top 5 features of the tool.

Reason #2, Compare against workspace.

When you’ve authored a review and are receiving feedback, your next duty is to take this feedback into account. In order to make that as simple as possible, the compare editor offers the ability to show on one side the patchset that contains the comments, and on the other the files from the workspace in which you can directly code your changes (see picture).

Taking comments into account.

How to make that work?

• Download the review (so the most recent revision is now in your workspace);
• open the compare editor;
• and set the revision with comments on the left side of the compare editor and the workspace on the right side.

Now, as you are going through the comments, you can directly take them into account without even going back to a full blown editor. Pretty slick isn’t it?

Comparing a patchset to the files in the workspace has additional benefits:

• Gauge the impact of an incoming review on your on-going work. Let’s say that while you are working on a new feature, someone publishes a new review touching some of the files you are modifying. Using the compare with workspace feature, you can quickly see if and how the changes in the new review overlaps with your on-going work;
• Measure the impact of an additional change you would like to do on the current review. Let’s imagine that you would like to perform additional changes in the code under review, then you could simply start editing the code and then see how much extra changes it creates on top of the existing one.

You can download EGerrit from the Neon release repo or from the Eclipse Marketplace. For questions, you can connect with us on egerrit-dev@eclipse.org; and for bugs or to take a peek at the future you can see our Kanban board.

5 reasons to use EGerrit - #3, In-place comments

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1, we are enumerating the top 5 features of the tool.

Reason #3 – In-place comments.

Performing a review means commenting. As you go through the changes, you want to enter comments right here and there, and this can be done directly from the compare editor! Simply start typing in the editor and you will see the new text appear with a yellow background indicating that this is a comment (see picture).

Saving the editor will push the comments as drafts. Of course comments that have been entered by other users are also shown in place.
You can download EGerrit from the Neon release repo or from the Eclipse Marketplace. For questions, you can connect with us on egerrit-dev@eclipse.org; and for bugs or to take a peek at the future you can see our Kanban board.

5 reasons to use EGerrit - #4, Simple checkout

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1, we are enumerating the top 5 features of the tool. After last week's #5 - Being in Eclipse, this week reason is simple checkout.

Reason #4 – Simple checkout.

Reviews often need to be downloaded to be examined in depth. For efficiency, EGerrit allows to download the code by the push of a button.
You can find this button in two places: in the EGerrit dashboard (see picture), where it will always cause the most recent revision to be downloaded, and in the editor where you can chose the revision to download.
You can download EGerrit from the Neon release repo or from the Eclipse Marketplace. For questions, you can connect with us on egerrit-dev@eclipse.org; and for bugs or to take a peek at the future you can see our Kanban board.

5 reasons to use EGerrit - #5, Being in Eclipse

To celebrate the release of EGerrit 1.1 and make you try it out, we (the EGerrit team, Jacques Bouthillier, Guy Perron, Marc Khouzam and myself) have decided to gather 5 reasons to use EGerrit and we will be posting one reason per week.

Reason #5 – Being in Eclipse.

“Being in Eclipse”?! Is that really a reason to use EGerrit? Isn’t that obvious?

Every time you bring a tool to Eclipse, there is the obvious gain of saving the user the “context switch”. In EGerrit we are addressing this by providing a view to list reviews,

Gerrit Dashboard

an editor to manage a review (rebase, submit, etc.),

Gerrit Review editor

and simple ways to comment. But beyond this, what really interests us is the integration (like in “I” of IDE) with the rest of the Eclipse ecosystem to simplify and enrich the act of performing a review.
Here is a list of some of the benefits so far:

• By integrating with the compare editor, you can perform reviews with the most relevant editor for the given file. For example with EMF compare installed, you get a nice comparison of the EMF ecore file rather than a textual comparison; for Java files you get a java editor which takes into account your preferences for syntax coloring;

  

  Comparing ecore file from a review

  
  

• By building on top of EGit, users get the UI they are familiar with when checking out code, get full access to previous versions of the code through the integrated Git blame or the History view, and can optionally perform reviews using the quick diff capability;
• The user has access to the complete source code (instead of just the few files that are part of the review), with full navigation and all syntax-aware features, thus being able to really measure the implication of a change.

You can download EGerrit from the Neon release repo or from the Eclipse Marketplace. For questions, you can connect with us on egerrit-dev@eclipse.org; and for bugs or to take a peek at the future you can see our Kanban board.