A Survey of Software Code Review Practices in Brazil

Context: Software code review aims to early find code anomalies and to perform code improvements when they are less expensive. However, issues and challenges faced by developers who do not apply code review practices regularly are unclear. Goal: Investigate difficulties developers face to apply code review practices without limiting the target audience to developers who already use this practice regularly. Method: We conducted a web-based survey with 350 Brazilian practitioners engaged on the software development industry. Results: Code review practices are widespread among Brazilian practitioners who recognize its importance. However, there is no routine for applying these practices. In addition, they report difficulties to fit static analysis tools in the software development process. One possible reason recognized by practitioners is that most of these tools use a single metric threshold, which might be not adequate to evaluate all system classes. Conclusion: Improving guidelines to fit code review practices into the software development process could help to make them widely used. Additionally, future studies should investigate whether multiple metric thresholds that take source code context into account reduce static analysis tool false alarms. Finally, these tools should allow their use in distinct phases of the software development process.背景：代码审查（Code Review）旨在尽早发现代码异常，并在代码修改成本较低的阶段开展代码优化工作。然而，未定期应用代码审查实践的开发者所面临的问题与挑战，目前仍不明确。 研究目标：探究开发者在应用代码审查实践时所遭遇的困难，且不将研究受众限定为已定期开展该实践的开发者。 研究方法：针对350名从业于软件开发行业的巴西从业者开展了网络问卷调查。 研究结果：代码审查实践在巴西从业者中已得到广泛应用，从业者普遍认可其重要性，但尚未形成标准化的执行流程。此外，从业者反馈称难以将静态分析工具（static analysis tools）适配至软件开发流程中。从业者提出的一项潜在原因是，多数此类工具仅采用单一指标阈值，或无法满足所有系统类别的评估需求。 研究结论：优化适配软件开发流程的代码审查实践指南，有助于推动该实践的广泛普及。此外，未来研究可探索结合源代码上下文的多指标阈值方案，是否能够降低静态分析工具的误报（false alarms）率。最后，此类工具应支持在软件开发流程的不同阶段中使用。