The new Review Bot adds new automated code review tools for Python source code, and brings some major enhancements to help you get the most out of automated code review.
Plus compatibility with the upcoming release of Review Board 4.0.
Introducing doc8 and pydocstyle
If you're a Python developer trying to keep your project's documentation in check, Review Bot can help you out through the new support for doc8 and pydocstyle.
doc8 checks your ReStructuredText-based documentation (used by Sphinx or docutils) for common problems, such as syntax or whitespace issues.
pydocstyle checks the Python side of your documentation, making sure your function, class, and module docstrings are all there and don't have any issues.
Automatically drop old issues from Review Bot
Review Bot can now be configured to drop any older issues it opened before it runs any tools again. No more massive lists of open issues to close every time you post an update to your change.
This can be configured for each automated code review tool individually.
Manually run and re-run tools
Tools can now be set to be run manually, instead of every time a new change is posted. This is especially useful for in-house tools that may take an extremely long amount of time to complete.
If any tool has failed to run for any reason, you can also re-run it with the click of a button. No need to re-upload your change.
(This requires Review Board 3.0.19 or the upcoming 4.0.)
Simpler configuration for tools needing the full repository
Some tools (such as clang) require a full copy of the repository. This used to require telling each worker about each and every repository a tool may need to access.
Workers can now fetch this information directly from Review Board, if configured on the worker. This requires that the worker has access to the path configured for the repository in Review Board, and any SSH keys needed.
New capabilities for tools
Custom tools can now leave general comments on a review request, not tied to any particular change or file. This is useful if the comment is more about process and policy, or about the description or testing performed, rather than code.
Get Started
Review Bot is compatible with Review Board 3 and 4, and is an easy upgrade. Just follow our simple instructions.
To learn more about this release, see the release notes.