engineering-code-review
Engineering Code Review
Use code review to protect and improve long-term code health while still allowing useful changes to land. The standard is not perfection; the standard is that the change improves the system overall and does not introduce unacceptable risk.
Adapted from Google Engineering Practices Documentation, especially the code review overview, reviewer guide, standard of review, navigation, speed, small changes, and emergency guidance. Sources: https://google.github.io/eng-practices/, https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/reviewer/standard.html, https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/reviewer/navigate.html, https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/reviewer/speed.html, https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/developer/small-cls.html, and https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/emergencies.html. License: CC-BY 3.0.
Review Standard
- Favor approval when the change definitely improves the code health of the touched system, even if it is not perfect.
- Do not approve changes that make the system worse unless this is a true emergency and the follow-up cleanup is explicit.
- Prefer technical facts, data, existing project standards, and durable design principles over taste.
- Treat style guides and automated formatters as authorities. Personal style preferences are nits.
- If several designs are defensible, accept the author's preference unless it harms code health.
- Ask for another qualified reviewer when the change touches specialized areas such as security, privacy, concurrency, accessibility, internationalization, infrastructure, data migration, or domain logic you cannot validate.