Gerrit vs Github for code review and codebase management

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Gerrit vs Github: for code review and codebase management

Sure, Github wins on the UI. Hands down. But, despite my initial annoyance with Gerrit when I first started using it almost a year ago, I am now a convert. Fully. Let me tell you why.

Note: This is an opinionated (on purpose) piece. I assume your preferences are like mine on certain ideas, such as:

• Fast-forward submits to the target branch are better than allowing merge commits to the target branch. The reason I personally prefer this is that, even if a non-conflicting merge to the target branch is possible, the fact that the review/pull request is not up to date with the latest on the target branch means feature branch test suite runs in the CI pipeline reporting on the review/PR may not be accurate. Another minor point is that forced merge commits are annoying as fuck (opinion) and clutter up Git log histories unnecessarily and I prefer clean histories.
• Atomic/related changes all in one commit is something worth striving for. Having your developers think about the granularity of their commits in terms of relatedness, cohesiveness, and deployment units makes the changes more manageable. This is my claim and the only evidence I have of it is the difference I have witnessed on teams that went from 1..N commits per feature branch to 1 commit per feature branch. The difference I saw was an awareness one. Developers started to think about viability of deployment of that one unit of change to each of the environments. That wasn't the case before we made the change to one commit per feature branch policy. You can enforce this using Github even, but it's not provided by the Github interface.
• Being able to publish a review in draft form without prefixing with "WIP" or other general convention (which is totally possible and scriptable in Github; I know I have done it previously) simply makes querying and permission/visibility of those reviews/PRs easier to manage and filter out/in when necessary. Perhaps a minor point.
• Limiting permissions can provide some merits to helping manage releases and codebase repositories more consistently via automated builds/CI/CD setups.

If you disagree with the above opinions then you will likely not agree with some or more of the following which is why I think Gerrit is better as an overall solution:

• Gerrit's reviews can be forced to be fast-forward only or rebasable-only. Github's PRs are merge based, which - frankly - disgusts me (just a little). I talk about this above a little but I should warn you of my biases: previously I built CI/CD tooling using Github workflow and it was impossible to reason about the change in a PR now matter what hooks and checks we had on the repository per PR without a LOT of extra work on the tool developer (me). And it wasn't even full coverage of the workarounds I really wanted as a CI/CD pipeline builder. Lots of busy work for very very little value (and a nice UI, sure, I still love Github web UI, but there has to be much more to a trusted partner than a pretty face).
• Github's PRs do not force you to think about atomic/related changes as one commit. Gerrit's reviews, by its restrictions (i.e. one commit per review), do force developers to think about this much more consciously. I think this is good. Great even.
• Github's PRs do not track the notion of review rating except loosely in the comments (which are free form). Gerrit's reviews do track this.
• Gerrit allows you to push draft reviews. There is no such notion in Github.
• If you want to use the rebase and squash approach in Github (because it's the most sensible, come on) then you can't track the whole history in the pull request. This is a problem. For example, if I provide inline feedback in a pull request and the other developer makes changes based on my comments, I can't view side by side in the UI the diff between the original pull request commit and the new commit without trying to track down the SHA commitish of the original, which is not necessarily easy to find (and not shown in the Github pull request history at all).
• On the one hand I like that git itself doesn't bake into it a permission model on the repository level, but I do like Gerrit's permission model ON TOP of git. At first I thought it was overkill and sometimes it is. However, I love the idea that in Gerrit I can make it such that only the CI user (e.g. jenkins or travis user) can create tags and push to the Gerrit remote. In this case, only on specific CI triggers are tags created. Tags can't accidentally be created by a developer and pushed to the remote. I'm a fan of consistency and operationalizing release management wherever possible so this is dear to my heart. There are other important areas where I think limiting access to certain features on the repository are useful too, this was just one example.

What Gerrit needs to improve:

• More coverage of command line options in one place (right now there is gerrit-review and git-review, it would be great to consolidate the CLI consistently for as many of the features available as possible)
• Better tig integration (which is on the user to update their .tigrc file and new bindings, etc.)
• Less cluttered UI.
• More intuitive UI (navigation, etc.)

Those who have built Android from source and worked with multi-branch and manifests know what I'm talking about. But for normal and simpler sane software development Gerrit is an INSANITY to use! From a developer perspective, Gerrit bloats and complicates all processes for normal (simpler) software development.

Really? In what way? Have you ever used it? I could not imagine going back to using PRs even for simple projects.

Well, I have used Gerrit a lot. And I have mixed opinions about it.
If you want to use a one commit per feature branch strategy, then Gerrit is an option.
Personally, I would tend to opt for Interactive Rebase and squash, if you only want a one commit per feature branch strategy.
Plus the Gerrit UI isn’t particularly nice.
It is a little medieval.

If you want to use a one commit per feature branch strategy, then Gerrit is an option.

You can have relation chains, with multiple commits, that you can see as a "virtual" branch, but each commit is still reviewed individually and it's a meaningful unit of work, and you don't lose any of the evolution of that branch.
If you squash your commits, you lose so much useful history.

Plus the Gerrit UI isn’t particularly nice.
It is a little medieval.

Yeah, fair, maybe not the best UI ever.

Yes. Personally, I prefer a merge strategy.
I don’t have a hang up about looking through multiple commits, in a PR.
And, as you say, it preserves a true audit trail.
Squashing is not something I would really recommend, unless you have obsessive peers, who can only deal with one commit per feature branch.
This is the situation I find myself, in, at the moment.
It is somewhat annoying, but our counter arguments have fallen upon deaf ears.

I wish I had a time machine so I could tell my younger self not to comment on this thread.