Demystifying Code Snippets in Code Reviews: A Study of the OpenStack and Qt Communities and A Practitioner Survey

TL;DR

This study investigates how code snippets are used in code reviews within OpenStack and Qt communities, revealing their role in improving review effectiveness and providing practical insights for practitioners.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive analysis of code snippet practices in code reviews through data mining and a practitioner survey, filling a research gap.

Findings

Code snippets are used to meet specific information needs in reviews.

Using code snippets can facilitate and accelerate the review process.

Practitioners find code snippets helpful in effective communication during reviews.

Abstract

Code review is widely known as one of the best practices for software quality assurance in software development. In a typical code review process, reviewers check the code committed by developers to ensure the quality of the code, during which reviewers and developers would communicate with each other in review comments to exchange necessary information. As a result, understanding the information in review comments is a prerequisite for reviewers and developers to conduct an effective code review. Code snippet, as a special form of code, can be used to convey necessary information in code reviews. For example, reviewers can use code snippets to make suggestions or elaborate their ideas to meet developers' information needs in code reviews. However, little research has focused on the practices of providing code snippets in code reviews. To bridge this gap, we conduct a mixed-methods study to mine information and knowledge related to code snippets in code reviews, which can help practitioners and researchers get a better understanding about using code snippets in code review. Specifically, our study includes two phases: mining code review data and conducting practitioners' survey. The study results highlight that reviewers can provide code snippets in appropriate scenarios to meet developers' specific information needs in code reviews, which will facilitate and accelerate the code review process.