CORRECT: Code Reviewer Recommendation at GitHub for Vendasta Technologies

TL;DR

CORRECT is a code reviewer recommendation tool for GitHub that leverages developers' cross-project experience and specialized technology expertise to suggest suitable reviewers automatically within the browser.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel Chrome plug-in that recommends code reviewers based on multi-faceted developer experience analysis for GitHub pull requests.

Findings

Effective reviewer suggestions within seconds

Increased accuracy over baseline methods

Easy integration into developer workflow

Abstract

Peer code review locates common coding standard violations and simple logical errors in the early phases of software development, and thus, reduces overall cost. Unfortunately, at GitHub, identifying an appropriate code reviewer for a pull request is challenging given that reliable information for reviewer identification is often not readily available. In this paper, we propose a code reviewer recommendation tool--CORRECT--that considers not only the relevant cross-project work experience (e.g., external library experience) of a developer but also her experience in certain specialized technologies (e.g., Google App Engine) associated with a pull request for determining her expertise as a potential code reviewer. We design our tool using client-server architecture, and then package the solution as a Google Chrome plug-in. Once the developer initiates a new pull request at GitHub, our tool automatically analyzes the request, mines two relevant histories, and then returns a ranked list of appropriate code reviewers for the request within the browser's context. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXU1wTD6QQ0