Skip to content

Code review

This document describes general guidelines for developers when reviewing a pull request (PR).

Verify that the PR solves the addressed issue

Understand the issue

  • Read the issue that was addressed by the PR and make sure you understand it
  • Read any discussions that occurred on the issue page

Check the PR

  • Check the PR for completeness: Was every point from the issue covered?
  • Check for correctness: Were the problems described in the issue solved in the intended way?
  • (For PRs that introduce new features:) Check the design - does it comply with our project guidelines?
  • Check for potential bugs - edge cases, exceptions that may be raised in functions that were called etc.
  • Check the code style: Is it readable? Do variables have sensible names? Is it consistent to existing code? Is there a better / more elegant way to do certain things (e.g. f-string instead of manual string concatenation)?
  • Check any warnings reported by your IDE

Check the tests

  • Run the tests locally
  • Check if there are any warnings that are not caught by the test suite
  • Make sure the test cases are complete - do they cover all edge cases (e.g. empty tables)?
  • Make sure they comply to our project guidelines - are the tests parametrized and do all testcases have descriptive IDs?

Verify that the PR does not break existing code

This is largely covered by the automated tests. However, you should always:

  • Make sure all tests actually ran through (pytest, linter, code coverage)
  • Make sure that the branch is up-to-date with the main branch, so you actually test the behaviour that will result once the feature branch is merged

Check the PR format

  • Check that the PR title starts with a fitting type (e.g. feat, fix, docs, ...)
  • Check that the changes introduced by the PR are documented in the PR message

Requesting changes

If you found any issues with the reviewed PR, navigate to the Files changed tab in the PR page and click on the respective line to add your comments.

For more details on specific review features, check out the documentation on GitHub.

Finishing the review

When done, finish your review by navigating to the Files changed tab and clicking the green Review changes button on the top right.

If you found no issues, select the Approve option to approve the changes made by the PR. If you like, you can add a "LGTM" meme from lgtm.party, preferably one with a cat image.

If you found any problems, select Request Changes instead.