Vivo Engineering Efficiency Team: VCR Platform Development and Code Review Plugin Implementation

This article introduces the VCR platform developed by vivo's Engineering Efficiency team based on open-source tools like Gitlab and Gerrit. It covers the development of code review idea plugins, challenges encountered during development, and corresponding strategies and optimization solutions.

Code review is a software quality assurance activity where one or more people read and understand part or all of a program's source code. Generally, there are two roles: the author who provides code logic introduction and code, and reviewers who read the provided code based on design, functionality, and non-functional aspects to raise questions. Common review formats include peer review and team inspection.

The purpose of code review is to discover potential problems through code review. Sharing and expression are important gains from code review. We know that people in different cultures have different productivity levels. Code review is a tool that is influenced by culture while also influencing culture, ultimately developing toward shared responsibility and continuous improvement.

The article traces the evolution of code review from manual checklists to automated and intelligent code review. It discusses the needs and pain points that code review tools aim to solve, including increased review methods, web/plugin support, development process control, automated checking, and user customization.

The vivo code review system architecture is presented, showing how the VCR platform integrates with Gerrit and Gitlab. The article details the implementation process, including technical architecture confirmation, plugin transformation, and specific development steps.

The plugin development process covers understanding the plugin framework, configuration, packaging, and running. It explains how to create plugins using Gradle, introduces plugin.xml configuration, and demonstrates running, debugging, packaging, and installation processes.

The article details the transformation of Gerrit plugins, including adding clone, branch, mergeRequest, and VCR modules, and enhancing various components. It explains how to customize the original push process and automate work item association.

Specific implementation details include using tree list mode to display push request VCR submission content and multiple CR situations, showing change file views, and customizing comment display modules for precise code location. The article explains how to add code block comments and locate code blocks precisely.

Future prospects include automated code review, where code is automatically checked before submission or merging, and intelligent code review using AI models to provide comprehensive evaluations and suggestions.