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Gerrit Code Review vs GitHub: What are the differences?
Introduction
Gerrit Code Review and GitHub are both popular code collaboration platforms used by developers. While they share some similarities, there are key differences between the two. In this article, we will explore the main differences between Gerrit Code Review and GitHub.
1. Access Control
Gerrit Code Review provides a powerful access control system, allowing administrators to define fine-grained permissions for different actions on the codebase. This includes the ability to set up pre-commit code reviews, ensuring that no code makes it into the repository without thorough review. On the other hand, GitHub's access control options are more limited, mainly revolving around repository-level permissions.
2. Workflow
Gerrit Code Review is often used in conjunction with Git, providing a workflow that revolves around code reviews before merging changes into the main repository. It enforces a strict process for submitting changes, involving code reviews, feedback, and approvals. GitHub, on the other hand, follows a more flexible workflow, allowing developers to work directly with branches and easily merge changes into the main branch.
3. Integration with CI/CD
Gerrit Code Review provides seamless integration with various continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) systems. It allows developers to trigger automated tests and builds based on code changes, ensuring that the code is always in a deployable state. GitHub also supports CI/CD integration, but the level of control and customization is more limited compared to Gerrit Code Review.
4. Code Collaboration Features
GitHub offers a rich set of collaboration features, such as pull requests, issues tracking, and project management tools. These features facilitate communication and collaboration among team members, making it easy to discuss changes, track progress, and manage tasks. While Gerrit Code Review does offer some collaboration features, such as inline commenting, it doesn't provide the same level of comprehensive collaboration tools as GitHub.
5. Community and Ecosystem
GitHub has a vibrant and large community, making it easy to discover and contribute to open-source projects. It offers a wide range of third-party integrations, plugins, and extensions, allowing developers to customize and extend their workflows. Gerrit Code Review, on the other hand, has a smaller community and a more limited ecosystem in terms of integrations and extensions.
6. Code Ownership
Gerrit Code Review emphasizes code ownership by associating each change with a specific reviewer. This means that there is a clear accountability for code quality, as each change has a designated reviewer responsible for reviewing and approving it. In GitHub, while reviewers can be assigned to pull requests, there is less emphasis on explicit code ownership.
In summary, Gerrit Code Review offers a more structured and controlled approach to code collaboration, with powerful access control, strict workflows, and seamless CI/CD integrations. On the other hand, GitHub provides a more flexible and feature-rich environment for code collaboration, with a larger community and a wider range of collaboration tools.
Do you review your Pull/Merge Request before assigning Reviewers?
If you work in a team opening a Pull Request (or Merge Request) looks appropriate. However, have you ever thought about opening a Pull/Merge Request when working by yourself? Here's a checklist of things you can review in your own:
- Pick the correct target branch
- Make Drafts explicit
- Name things properly
- Ask help for tools
- Remove the noise
- Fetch necessary data
- Understand Mergeability
- Pass the message
- Add screenshots
- Be found in the future
- Comment inline in your changes
Read the blog post for more detailed explanation for each item :D
What else do you review before asking for code review?
Using an inclusive language is crucial for fostering a diverse culture. Git has changed the naming conventions to be more language-inclusive, and so you should change. Our development tools, like GitHub and GitLab, already supports the change.
SourceLevel deals very nicely with repositories that changed the master branch to a more appropriate word. Besides, you can use the grep linter the look for exclusive terms contained in the source code.
As the inclusive language gap may happen in other aspects of our lives, have you already thought about them?
One of the magic tricks git performs is the ability to rewrite log history. You can do it in many ways, but git rebase -i is the one I most use. With this command, It’s possible to switch commits order, remove a commit, squash two or more commits, or edit, for instance.
It’s particularly useful to run it before opening a pull request. It allows developers to “clean up” the mess and organize commits before submitting to review. If you follow the practice 3 and 4, then the list of commits should look very similar to a task list. It should reveal the rationale you had, telling the story of how you end up with that final code.
Out of most of the VCS solutions out there, we found Gitlab was the most feature complete with a free community edition. Their DevSecops offering is also a very robust solution. Gitlab CI/CD was quite easy to setup and the direct integration with your VCS + CI/CD is also a bonus. Out of the box integration with major cloud providers, alerting through instant messages etc. are all extremely convenient. We push our CI/CD updates to MS Teams.
Gitlab as A LOT of features that GitHub and Azure DevOps are missing. Even if both GH and Azure are backed by Microsoft, GitLab being open source has a faster upgrade rate and the hosted by gitlab.com solution seems more appealing than anything else! Quick win: the UI is way better and the Pipeline is way easier to setup on GitLab!
At DeployPlace we use self-hosted GitLab, we have chosen GitLab as most of us are familiar with it. We are happy with all features GitLab provides, I can’t imagine our life without integrated GitLab CI. Another important feature for us is integrated code review tool, we use it every day, we use merge requests, code reviews, branching. To be honest, most of us have GitHub accounts as well, we like to contribute in open source, and we want to be a part of the tech community, but lack of solutions from GitHub in the area of CI doesn’t let us chose it for our projects.
Pros of Gerrit Code Review
- Code review14
- Good workflow12
- Cleaner repository story11
- Open source10
- Good integration with Jenkins10
- Unlimited repo support6
- Comparison dashboard3
- Great for team collaboration1
Pros of GitHub
- Open source friendly1.8K
- Easy source control1.5K
- Nice UI1.3K
- Great for team collaboration1.1K
- Easy setup868
- Issue tracker504
- Great community487
- Remote team collaboration483
- Great way to share449
- Pull request and features planning442
- Just works147
- Integrated in many tools132
- Free Public Repos122
- Github Gists116
- Github pages113
- Easy to find repos83
- Open source62
- Easy to find projects60
- It's free60
- Network effect56
- Extensive API49
- Organizations43
- Branching42
- Developer Profiles34
- Git Powered Wikis32
- Great for collaboration30
- It's fun24
- Clean interface and good integrations23
- Community SDK involvement22
- Learn from others source code20
- Because: Git16
- It integrates directly with Azure14
- Standard in Open Source collab10
- Newsfeed10
- Fast8
- Beautiful user experience8
- It integrates directly with Hipchat8
- Easy to discover new code libraries7
- It's awesome6
- Smooth integration6
- Cloud SCM6
- Nice API6
- Graphs6
- Integrations6
- Hands down best online Git service available5
- Reliable5
- Quick Onboarding5
- CI Integration5
- Remarkable uptime5
- Security options4
- Loved by developers4
- Uses GIT4
- Free HTML hosting4
- Easy to use and collaborate with others4
- Version Control4
- Simple but powerful4
- Unlimited Public Repos at no cost4
- Nice to use3
- IAM3
- Ci3
- Easy deployment via SSH3
- Free private repos2
- Good tools support2
- All in one development service2
- Never dethroned2
- Easy source control and everything is backed up2
- Issues tracker2
- Self Hosted2
- IAM integration2
- Very Easy to Use2
- Easy to use2
- Leads the copycats2
- Free HTML hostings2
- Easy and efficient maintainance of the projects2
- Beautiful2
- Dasf1
- Profound1
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Cons of Gerrit Code Review
Cons of GitHub
- Owned by micrcosoft55
- Expensive for lone developers that want private repos38
- Relatively slow product/feature release cadence15
- API scoping could be better10
- Only 3 collaborators for private repos9
- Limited featureset for issue management4
- Does not have a graph for showing history like git lens3
- GitHub Packages does not support SNAPSHOT versions2
- Horrible review comments tracking (absence)1
- Takes a long time to commit1
- No multilingual interface1
- Expensive1
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