Code Review Tools

It would be great if some code review tools and functions could be added to Studio to facilitate easy collaborative code review. What I’m thinking is some markup functions along the lines of the review tools in MS Word.

At the basic end of the scale it could be something as small as creating a second type of annotation and then having a tool which shows a list of all of these annotations and takes you to one when you click on it.

At the other end of the scale you could full on and add audit trails to code comments so you can see when it was left, when it was fixed, who approved it etc…but maybe that’s for later :wink:

@Foehl https://www.roboyo.de/en/2019/03/petze-quality-code-reviewer/
Check this for a reference

Hi,
Thank you for your suggestion. I added it to our internal ideas tracker for our team to consider.

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I kind of think it would be useful if there was a tool that would create a reformatted copy of your workflow.xaml files in a more readable python ‘like’ manner… So for example Assign activities would be reformatted to foo=1 or whatever. Where sequences are inside a while or if-else block they are shown that way with python like indenting. Then it would be easier to compare what people commit. I get why you developed a GUI to write automation, but people have been programming successfully using text for years.

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What do you think about the outline panel?

Maybe what you’re proposing could be done with a functionality that allows developers export the outline panel to a file but more detailed (not only activity type and display name).

An export of the outline panel (with more details) is kind of what I’m after so that changes can be compared using diff tools such as those in git. There are two things though. [1] You would want the export to happen automatically when you save changes, so that each git commit contains the export file reflecting the state of the workflow.xaml at that point. [2] The format of the export needs to be more human readable than a workflow.xaml file, but be free of any special formatting characters, and UI positioning hints, so the diff of the text is not cluttered with ‘meaningless’ content.

I’ve got to say the show changes, show history when you right-click on a workflow.xaml file is a really good feature - that UIPath have done well. but does not provide a way to drill down into the detail of the change, just shows what activity was changed.

I’ve knocked this up in python3 … might be useful to some people … Still a bit of a work in progress. But gives a bit of an example of the sort of tool we could do with.

The git changes window isn’t bad but does not let you compare between branches. Maybe some of its code could be re-purposed to so there is a page allowing compare between branches. Alternatively if the UIPath UI stuff like HintSize could be seperated out of the normal zaml into a seperate zaml (ideally a zipped zaml so git treats it as a binary file) that would help. reviewcode.zip (7.6 KB)

Hi @andrew.pate, it might be a good idea to raise a separate idea request for what you’re after since your idea is distinct from my original suggestion That way your request won’t get lost in the mix.