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Even at Google, most people find Gerrit to be pretty intimidating. It’s mostly only used for Chrome, Go, and Android and it’s far behind Google’s flagship revie

Even at Google, most people find Gerrit to be pretty intimidating. It’s mostly only used for Chrome, Go, and Android and it’s far behind Google’s flagship review tool (Critique). Gerrit is not a bad tool but it is somewhat hard to get used to if you have the more common GitHub-flavored git experience that most software engineers have these days. I expect if the goal is to get the most vibrant contributor community possible the best thing would be to move to a GitHub-first workflow where Gerrit is supported as a backup. But there’s too much inertia for that to ever happen.

aseipp 3y ago
Honestly, I really think Gerrit would be so much better if it weren't for the UI being so... compact? I think it's actually got good information, and a review tool is something many people spend tons of time in, so power-user proficiency is important. But the density is wrong, and I feel it makes it more cluttered than necessary, and that drives people away? Here's a good example of what I mean, taking a change from ChromiumOS's Gerrit versus a random patch on Phorge (a fork of Phabricator which uses a similar workflow): - https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromiumos/third_party/kernel/+/4228112 https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromiumos/third_... - https://we.phorge.it/D25332 https://we.phorge.it/D25332 The Gerrit one is really busy in my opinion, while the Phorge one gives the page a lot more breathing room, which I think just makes viewing it much easier and less intimidating. Despite that Phorge is still good for power users: it shows all the needed information, has hotkey shortcuts for fast navigation, nice diff viewer, nice side panel with all diffs listed, etc. I'm trying to set up Gerrit right now and the really compact UI is honestly my main complaint. Maybe someone who's better at UI/UX can give more refined comparison or analysis, but the nice, "bigger" design of Phabricator/Phorge's diff viewer is something I really miss. (I also like the "untabbed" design of Phorge, contra GitHub; all the comments, changes, and code is on one page, instead of having to click back and forth between comments and diffs.)
drycode 3y ago
I was working on the Fuschia project at Google and we used Gerrit as well. It definitely took some getting used to, but once I got the hang of it I found it to be a much better review tool. It was a lot easier to show how contributions stacked, to continue iterating on a “branch” while waiting for a review from the team, and worked better with trunk-based development workflows.
deleted 3y ago
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gravypod 3y ago
(Opinions are my own) Gerrit seems to have a lot of extra features in it that make it extra confusing to me. Critique has a lot of features but all of them feel more like intuitive extensions on top of a code review platform (ex: attention set https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book/html/ch19.html https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book/html/ch19.html). Gerrit seems to have a lot more going on in a much smaller (cramped IMO) UI.
newusertoday 3y ago
interesting! i find gerrit to be much more enjoyable and find github's PR system inferior.I was also thinking of offering simple gerrit based system for gerrit refugees who left the company and don't want to use github pr for reviewing.

aseipp 3y ago

Honestly, I really think Gerrit would be so much better if it weren't for the UI being so... compact? I think it's actually got good information, and a review tool is something many people spend tons of time in, so power-user proficiency is important. But the density is wrong, and I feel it makes it more cluttered than necessary, and that drives people away? Here's a good example of what I mean, taking a change from ChromiumOS's Gerrit versus a random patch on Phorge (a fork of Phabricator which uses a similar workflow): - https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromiumos/third_party/kernel/+/4228112 https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromiumos/third_... - https://we.phorge.it/D25332 https://we.phorge.it/D25332 The Gerrit one is really busy in my opinion, while the Phorge one gives the page a lot more breathing room, which I think just makes viewing it much easier and less intimidating. Despite that Phorge is still good for power users: it shows all the needed information, has hotkey shortcuts for fast navigation, nice diff viewer, nice side panel with all diffs listed, etc. I'm trying to set up Gerrit right now and the really compact UI is honestly my main complaint. Maybe someone who's better at UI/UX can give more refined comparison or analysis, but the nice, "bigger" design of Phabricator/Phorge's diff viewer is something I really miss. (I also like the "untabbed" design of Phorge, contra GitHub; all the comments, changes, and code is on one page, instead of having to click back and forth between comments and diffs.)

drycode 3y ago

I was working on the Fuschia project at Google and we used Gerrit as well. It definitely took some getting used to, but once I got the hang of it I found it to be a much better review tool. It was a lot easier to show how contributions stacked, to continue iterating on a “branch” while waiting for a review from the team, and worked better with trunk-based development workflows.

deleted 3y ago

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gravypod 3y ago

(Opinions are my own) Gerrit seems to have a lot of extra features in it that make it extra confusing to me. Critique has a lot of features but all of them feel more like intuitive extensions on top of a code review platform (ex: attention set https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book/html/ch19.html https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book/html/ch19.html). Gerrit seems to have a lot more going on in a much smaller (cramped IMO) UI.

newusertoday 3y ago

interesting! i find gerrit to be much more enjoyable and find github's PR system inferior.I was also thinking of offering simple gerrit based system for gerrit refugees who left the company and don't want to use github pr for reviewing.