A Survey of Software Code Review Practices in Brazil

TL;DR

This survey explores the current state of code review practices among Brazilian developers, highlighting challenges in routine application and integration of static analysis tools, and suggests improvements for wider adoption.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on code review practices in Brazil and identifies specific challenges and potential improvements for integrating static analysis tools into development workflows.

Findings

Code review is recognized as important but not routinely practiced.

Developers face difficulties integrating static analysis tools into workflows.

Single-metric threshold tools may not adequately evaluate all system classes.

Abstract

Context: Software code review aims to early find code anomalies and to perform code improvements when they are less expensive. However, issues and challenges faced by developers who do not apply code review practices regularly are unclear. Goal: Investigate difficulties developers face to apply code review practices without limiting the target audience to developers who already use this practice regularly. Method: We conducted a web-based survey with 350 Brazilian practitioners engaged on the software development industry. Results: Code review practices are widespread among Brazilian practitioners who recognize its importance. However, there is no routine for applying these practices. In addition, they report difficulties to fit static analysis tools in the software development process. One possible reason recognized by practitioners is that most of these tools use a single metric threshold, which might be not adequate to evaluate all system classes. Conclusion: Improving guidelines to fit code review practices into the software development process could help to make them widely used. Additionally, future studies should investigate whether multiple metric thresholds that take source code context into account reduce static analysis tool false alarms. Finally, these tools should allow their use in distinct phases of the software development process.