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Upsource: New Code Review Tool

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I have a special place in my heart for web apps that make coding management easier.  This week, my crush is Upsource, a new code review tool (and source code repository browser) that’s in a semi-public alpha period.
[youtube=http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/watch?v=QIu0ZjR96EY&w=640&h=360]
It looks to have a great interface for:

  • starting ad hoc reviews or requesting reviews
  • looping in other people to discuss or watch the review
  • linking to reviews or multi-line selections
  • adding new code revisions to an ongoing review

Software screen capture

It’s meant for post-commit reviews (that is, you’ve already committed code to a repository, rather than uploading diffs into the system).
Upsource will be commercial later, but for now it’s freely available through JetBrains’ Early Access Program as a host-your-own server installation. As a JetBrains project, it has extra features for Java code under review, but provides plenty of functionality for other languages and works with Git, Mercurial, Subversion and Perforce.
The last time I convinced a company to switch to mediated reviews (as opposed to emailing diffs and comments), we used Review Board. It looks like Review Board is still growing, but I’m glad to see new entrants into a relatively sparse market.

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