Multi-comment multi-commit code review from anywhere
Code can reach master without being fully reviewed, either because it is committed there directly, or because it wasn't reviewed thoroughly at the time. If I come across code that needs review that is already in master I want to be able to start a structured code review so that my feedback can be addressed.
Currently there is no way to leave multiple comments on one or more commits that can then be addressed in a code review in a streamlined fashion. GitLab should make this possible.
Use cases
Commit to master – not all projects or teams are able to easily adopt software engineering best practices like using merge requests to performing thorough code reviews before merging. The team may not be large enough (one engineer), or it may be a team that only writes software for a very small percentage of their work (scientist who mostly does lab work and occasionally writes software). In these applications, occasional reviews are performed, rather than continuously through a branching and merging process.
Reviewing smelly code - even organizations that code review every change sometimes end up with technical debt or code smells. Although this is rare This is common in every long running software project. A strategy for addressing this is to perform reviews of existing code that needs improvement.
Proposal
- compare a set of commits (e.g.
<group>/<project>/compare/SHA...SHA) - click a review button (launches a batch comment interface on the diff https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/1984)
- submit review would then create a new branch and empty merge request with unresolved discussions