Reviewing a Pull Request
Each developer does not have Push (or write) access to the Central Remote Repository. They must issue a Pull request so code reviewers can inspect their work. The code reviewer then examines the developer’s work, approves (or rejects) it, and applies changes to the Central Repository or communicates with the developer to make corrections.
The following steps outline the process of Reviewing a Pull request:
- Navigate to https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}.
- Click Repos and select Pull requests.
- In the Active Tab, select the required Pull request.
- In the Overview Tab of a PR, see the Title, Description, Reviewers, Linked Worked Items, History, Status, and Comments. Read the PRDescription to see the proposed changes. View the Comments to understand the issues raised by other reviewers.
Select the Files Tab to review all PR’s Source Branch content changes. The initial view shows a summary view of all file changes. Choose the View button next to a file to view only that file’s changes. The View button opens a Diff View if the file was modified or a content pane if the file was added or deleted.
- In a Diff View for a file, select either a Side-by-side or Inline Diff layout.
- To review the Changeset introduced by specific Pushes to the Source Branch, select one or more Changesets from the Changes drop-down list. When one or more Changesets is selected, the Diff View updates to show only the changes from the selected Changesets. This feature is useful when changes have been pushed to the PR since the last review and a user just wants to see the new changes. The Changes dropdown list names each Changeset with the Commit Message from the final Commit in each Push operation.
- Choose the Updates Tab to view all pushed Changesets to ensure any Source Branch changes are not missed. The Changesets are numbered, and the most recent Changeset appears at the top of the list. Each Changeset shows the Commits that were pushed in that Push operation. A force-pushed Changeset won’t overwrite the Changeset History and will show up in the Changeset list like any other Changeset.
- Choose the Commits Tab to view the Commit History of the Source Branch after it diverges from the Target Branch. The Commit History in the Commits Tab will be overwritten if the PR author force-pushes a different Commit History, so the Commits shown in the Commits Tab might differ from those shown in the Updates Tab.
- If there are any issues or questions about the changes provided by the developer, the reviewer can leave a comment for the developer. In the left panel, select the Method file, hover over the line to comment on, and select the Comment button to open an inline Comment box. The user can also select multiple lines and then select the Comment button that appears when hovering over those lines.
- As the PR author, the developer must resolve the Comment by taking the appropriate action (e.g., making the changes in their Local Repository) and then submitting the change for approval through the PR request workflow.