There is no doubt that direct feedback in software development helps reduce the number of bugs, increases the sharing of knowledge in the team, and establishes a sense of shared ownership and shared responsibility for each feature. To support this, Atlassian is constantly extending the capabilities of pull requests in its Git repository management system, Bitbucket Server. The new release 4.11 supports iterative reviews, which allows the development team to discuss the code changes in the context of a single pull request.
See all changes since the last review
Pull requests are valuable, but sometimes they can be updated very quickly - for example, when a team member is tagged as a reviewer of a very large pull request, after each sip of coffee, new updates are available. Searching for the latest changes often eats a large chunk of time.
Bitbucket Server shows exactly what has changed since the last review in this release. You will no longer have to go through the tedium of searching for changes and reviewing code you have already looked at. When you return to a review that has been updated, Bitbucket automatically provides you with the commits performed since your last review. You can then easily comment on only the most recently added commits.
If a developer is not yet ready to release the pull request, they can set a status indicator to indicate that further processing is required. When they return to work, Bitbucket shows only the changes since the status indicator was set.
Merge with certainty
Developers not only have to review very large pull requests, but they also create them. These large pull requests often contain code with the potential to paralyze the entire project. Even though the developer is doing his best to minimize bugs and ensure clean builds, it can be stressful to merge without the team having approved. That is why pull requests are so valuable.
The moment always comes when the developer begins to implement changes that the team needs to review again. Has anyone in the team seen the fix for this big error? Is the pull request ready for merging? Thanks to the iterative reviews, Bitbucket Server clearly answers these questions, eliminating much uncertainty from the process. Developers can be certain that the team has reviewed all changes before they start to merge their work.
Iterative reviews in Bitbucket Server have the power to raise pull requests to a new level. While reviewers save time since they no longer have to ask whether or not they have reviewed this or that change, pull request developers can be sure that each modification has actually been reviewed and released by colleagues, before they merge.
Want to use Git and Bitbucket effectively? We are your partner!
Bitbucket offers a centralized solution for the management of the entire distributed code base: All Git repositories throughout the company are stored together here, developers always find the last official version of a project, and project-specific permissions ensure that the right users have access to the right code. Would you like to know more? We are an official Atlassian sales partner, and one of the largest Atlassian experts in the world. We are happy to help you with the evaluation, licensing and integration of Bitbucket.
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Further information
99 Reasons for Bitbucket Server (formerly Stash) as a Git Repository Manager
Interview: Advantages of Git for software development and the possibilities of Stash
Atlassian confirms: //SEIBERT/ MEDIA is ready for Git Essentials
Release notes: All the features of all Bitbucket Server versions
