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I'm trying to implement a process so that the manager can Review the code of all developers before the developers can check in to TFS 2013.

Is there any process to require a review of the code by a human being before it is added to a real project?

I'm using TFS 2013 with Visual Studio 2013.

Jeroen
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Amaan Khan
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1 Answers1

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TFS 2013 supports this out of the box, and is very straight forward to use.

Developer needs to file a request for review in the team explorer:

  • Go to Team Explorer
  • Open pending changes
  • Under "Actions" menu, choose Request Review
  • Specify the reviewer, and send.

The target user (in your case, the manager) will get notified (if you've configured the Email settings on the TFS), and can also see the review requests in Team Explorer > My Work.

Reviewer can see all the changes made by the developer, comment on them, and send the comments to the developer. The whole thing happens inside Visual Studio, and all the comments are kept on TFS and can be reported later.

Also, upon completion of review, the reviewer can specify his/her opinion of the changes as "Looks Good", "With Comments" or "Needs Work".

Make sure you read this page on MSDN regarding this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh474795.aspx

You can also check out this video on Channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Visual-Studio-2012-Premium-and-Ultimate-Overview/Visual-Studio-Ultimate-2012-Using-Code-Review-to-Improve-Quality

EDIT

To prevent check-in without a review, you can use a check-in policy. Here's a custom check-in policy that requires code review before check-in:

https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/c476b708-77a8-4065-b9d0-919ab688f078

But I should point out that check-in policies are not security mechanisms, think of them as a reminder for the developer to send the code for check-in. Developers can easily override them.

If you really need to prevent any check-ins, you should deny commit permission for developers, and have them send their changes to the manager using a code-review (or shelve set). The manager can then unshelve the changes and commit after reviewing.

Iravanchi
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    Yes you are right. but the visual studio shows both option "ask for review" and "check in", the developer can check in code without review. What i want is the developer ask for review and the manager check in code after reviwing. And the developer cannot checkin code without asking for review. – Amaan Khan Oct 29 '14 at 06:45
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    It's important to note that code reviews currently can only be requested and viewed by VS Premium and Ultimate users, not VS Professional. – Jazaret Apr 10 '15 at 14:59
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    @Jazaret Note that as of VS2015, users of the Community, Professional, and Enterprise editions can all use the code review tools – Cocowalla Mar 08 '16 at 10:36
  • About the last suggestion, the one about shelving... This will cause all changes to be logged as having been done by the manager. Is there an easy, visual way to check in on behalf of another user? I see that there is a permission setting for that, but Ic an't find any documentation on how to do that other than using impersonation or command line. – Geeky Guy May 17 '16 at 20:15
  • @Iravanchi there is no option as "Request Review" in the Actions menu as you have mentioned here. – Kashif Khan Jan 23 '17 at 10:31