New code review tool coming for Chromium-related projects

[Julie Parent]

tl;dr Chromium, and related projects, will migrate to using PolyGerrit for code review, developed in tandem with, and run by, the Gerrit team in early 2017.

Details:

This is a follow-up to our July announcement about the transition from Rietveld to Gerrit, to provide an update and quell any rumors that are floating around regarding The Future of Code Review.

The current Chromium code review tool is an old fork of Rietveld, and has been in maintenance mode for some time. It is a maintenance burden for the infra team, as we  support both Rietveld and Gerrit. Rather than invest further in this antiquated tool, we are moving all projects to Gerrit, via a brand new UI, PolyGerrit [1]. In addition to a number of new features that come standard with Gerrit, plus improved performance, and a better security story, it also comes with a fully staffed team, including SREs, behind it.  We promise, this will be a better experience and will allow Chromium's infra team to focus our efforts.

We know code review is rather essential to your daily workflows, and will do everything we can to make this transition as easy as possible. Since there are likely concerns and questions, we’ve put together a FAQ. Please check it out, and we’ll treat it as a living document, adding to it as time progresses.

That’s all for now, but going forward, we’ll be sending monthly updates as the transition approaches [2].  And rest assured, you'll get to try it out before we just flip a switch and force you to change.

Julie, on behalf of the PolyGerrit team

[1] For details on why this approach was taken, see the initial proposal.

[2] Do you love Dogfooding, and work with a small, contained group of others who do as well?  If so, please reach out.  We’ll be looking for more Dogfooders soon, and it works best when there is a group who review each other’s code willing to try it out together.

[Julie Parent]

Thank you all for the enthusiastic response!

For those interested in Dogfooding, please fill out this form, and we'll invite you when we are ready  (If you've responded to me privately, please also fill out the form, it will help us track onboarding).