If you use Google Code's open source project hosting service, you're
probably already familiar with the standard features: the issue tracker, the wiki, the
downloads-area, and the browseable version-control repository.
But the
project hosting service is also full of cool bells and whistles that you may not have noticed
before. We've compiled a fun list of these things which you can show off at your next, um,
project hackathon. In this first post, we'll look at some version control gems.
Web-based Code Reviews
What: browse a committed change, then make
comments right in the browser.
How to do it: Bring up a changeset in the source
browser and click the "start a code review" link in the right-side bubble. Double-click on
lines of code to enter comments, then click "publish your comments" when done. An email will
be sent to the changeset author, and then they can reply to the comments through the same web
interface.
Make Stuff Happen after a
Commit
What: after a commit, you can automatically fire off a continuous
build, make an IRC bot speak... even notify an AppEngine instance!
How to do it:
Look for the "web hooks" section in the Administer->Source page. If you provide a URL to
your server, we'll ping it with commit information after every code change. Follow the links
for full details and documentation.
Descriptive Wiki Commit Logs
What: The wiki is stored in version
control; when saving a wiki page, use a more descriptive commit message than the default
"Edited wiki page through web user interface".
How to do
it: When editing a wiki page, expand and fill out the "Commit Log"
textfield.
Of course, one of the most exciting new features
on our project hosting service is our nascent support for the Mercurial distributed version
control system. If you're coming to Google
I/O, be sure to come hear our talk about Mercurial on
Bigtable!
By Ben Collins-Sussman, Software Engineer, Google Code
