SmartPatchLinker: An Open-Source Tool to Linked Changes Detection for Code Review

TL;DR

SmartPatchLinker is a Chrome extension that helps code reviewers find semantically related code changes within Gerrit, reducing duplicated effort and improving review efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a lightweight, open-source browser tool with local inference for linking related patches directly in the code review interface.

Findings

Supports real-time discovery of related code changes during review

Enhances review efficiency by reducing duplicated effort

Open source with available source code and evaluation data

Abstract

In large software ecosystems, semantically related code changes, such as alternative solutions or overlapping modifications are often discovered only days after submission, leading to duplicated effort and delayed reviews. We present SmartPatchLinker, a browser based tool that supports the discovery of related patches directly within the code review interface. SmartPatchLinker is implemented as a lightweight Chrome extension with a local inference backend and integrates with Gerrit to retrieve and rank semantically linked changes when a reviewer opens a patch. The tool allows reviewers to configure the search scope, view ranked candidates with confidence indicators, and examine related work without leaving their workflow or relying on server-side installations. We perform both usefulness and usability evaluations to study how SmartPatchLinker can support reviewers during code review. SmartPatchLinker is open source, and its source code, Docker containers, and the replication package used in our evaluation are publicly available on GitHub at https://github.com/islem-kms/gerrit-chrome-extension . A video demonstrating the tool is also available online at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MCcTj5OSlT7lHVBFMq5m9iatas2joaGb