Review Assistant vs. Upsource

Combined with Code Compare and running Review Assistant on the TFS server, it provides a good way to share code and comments amount our team. It does everything we need it to do for code reviews and has a reporting tool.

Upsource is the best review tool we've found but it still has some flaws. Notably, it makes reviewing small and quick changes less convenient than they need to be, and diff viewing (especially collaboratively) can be tedious.

It does handle larger, iterative reviews well. Especially when using a feature branch, Upsource will track that branch and automatically add all commits to the review. You can then review the branch as a whole, or look at a subset of diffs.

Incentivized

• Review Assistant does everything that I was hoping the default Visual Studio reviews would do. The iterations through accept/reject were the key winner.
• The functionality for code reviews is great, especially the ability to comment on specific lines of code.
• You don't have to leave the IDE.

• Automatically watch git repositories
• Track all commits in a branch in a single commit
• Integrates with build server to report build status of specific commits when looking at reviews/commits
• Integrates with JetBrains IDEs
• Ability for reviewers to add comments inline and require comments to be resolved before approval
• Built in diff viewer, both stacked and side-by-side

Incentivized

• Integration with JIRA is missing.
• Ability to search, filter and order comments.
• There is no support for Visual Studio Code.

• Creating and closing reviews isn't as quick as it could be. You must create a review, assign reviewers, approve and close. I wish there would be a quick review-approve-close for a commit where the change is simple and doesn't require multiple review iterations.
• Web based interface can be clunky, especially when looking at big diffs side-by-side
• JetBrains IDE integration is somehow less convenient than going using it in browser.

Incentivized

Microsoft provides a handy feature for code review inside the Visual Studio IDE. Review Assistant, though providing a similar code review user experience, supports work scenarios that are not covered by the Microsoft's IDE. Moreover, the version control systems support is broader in Review Assistant.

Compared to the other tools we evaluated, Upsource was the only tool that allowed distinct reviews without needing explicit pull requests while still being able to go in-depth when required. The diff viewer is serviceable and better than the alternatives, as well, especially the side-by-side viewer.

Incentivized

• The tool saves a huge amount of time while reviewing the code. Review Assistant supports threaded comments, so team members can discuss code without scheduled meetings.

• Increased our code base quality
• Reduced the number of bugs found after deployment (bugs are found in review and fixed before deploy)
• Improved knowledge sharing

Incentivized