| --- |
| title: "Gerrit Project News #10: June-November 2020" |
| tags: news |
| keywords: news |
| permalink: 2020-11-18-gerrit-news-jun-nov-2020.html |
| summary: "Gerrit project news from June to November 2020." |
| hide_sidebar: true |
| hide_navtoggle: true |
| toc: true |
| --- |
| |
| # New Features |
| |
| ## Attention Set |
| |
| We are happy to announce that the new attention set feature is now available and |
| turned on for Google’s hosted Gerrit sites. This feature allows users to better |
| understand whose turn it is in a review. Attention arrows are now displayed |
| beside the user name and in the dashboard. You can read more about the attention |
| set |
| [here](https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/user-attention-set.html#_interaction). |
| |
|  |
| |
| Attention can be assigned to a user (e.g. owner, reviewer or CC) by hovering |
| over their name on the change page and clicking “Add to attention set”, or while |
| replying to a change. |
| |
| The attention set will be available in the next v3.3 release. |
| |
| ## New Account Cache |
| |
| The “accounts” cache was reworked and persisted. It holds the account details |
| and all the information stored under the user’s ref. The new design requires a |
| lot less I/O when an entry needs to be reloaded and lowered the ratio of cache |
| misses in case of user’s details updates. |
| |
| ## Projects Cache |
| |
| We persisted the “projects” cache by splitting it into 2 caches: an in-memory |
| cache and a persisted cache. The former is keyed by the project name and does |
| not need to look up the ObjectId of refs/meta/config in NoteDb. The latter is a |
| persisted variant of the “projects” cache and allows admins to persist the |
| project cache - if desired - to ease cold start times. |
| |
| ## Ported Comments |
| |
| Gerrit now supports porting comments of other revisions to a requested revision. |
| Two new endpoints are now available: [GET ported |
| comments](https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/rest-api-changes.html#get-ported-comments) |
| and [GET ported |
| drafts](https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/rest-api-changes.html#get-ported-drafts). |
| Ported comments is an important feature that will help users view unresolved |
| comments from all patchsets on the latest patchset, hence helping users not to |
| miss them. This feature will soon be available in the polygerrit UI. |
| |
| ## Comment Context |
| |
| The “[List Change |
| Comments](https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/rest-api-changes.html#list-change-comments)” |
| endpoint now has an enable_context parameter that allows retrieving the lines of |
| the source file where the comment was written. This feature will soon be |
| available in the polygerrit UI. |
| |
| ## Patchset Level Comments |
| |
| We introduced a new type of comments: patchset-level comments are associated |
| with a specific patchset but are not attached to any file or line. So what you |
| are saying in the “Reply” dialog becomes a threaded conversation with an |
| “unresolved” flag. |
| |
|  |
| |
| ## Coming Next |
| |
| Upcoming features for comments will soon be available in the user interface. |
| This includes ported comments, comment context and others. |
| |
| # UI Enhancements |
| |
| ## Comment Links |
| |
| The destination of comment links has changed to point to the diff between the |
| comment's patchset vs. latest instead of the comment's patchset vs. base. This |
| helps reviewers quickly check that their comments have been addressed. New |
| keyboard shortcuts were also added for quickly changing the patchset choice. |
| |
|  |
| |
| ## Unresolved comments in the dashboard |
| |
| A new icon was added to the dashboard in the “CR” column if the change has |
| unresolved comments. |
| |
|  |
| |
| # Plugins |
| |
| ## Code Owners |
| |
| The new [code-owners](https://gerrit.googlesource.com/plugins/code-owners) |
| plugin is now available to support defining owners for files in a repository. If |
| the code-owners plugin is enabled, changes can only be submitted if all touched |
| files are covered by approvals from code owners. |
| |
| ## Download Commands |
| |
| The “Download patch” UI now includes an option for creating a local branch. This |
| allows developers who are not familiar with the idiosyncrasies of repo, to |
| easily create a local branch when checking out changes. |
| |
| ## Cache ChronicleMap |
| |
| We added a new non-blocking and super-fast on-disk cache to the Gerrit modules. |
| The cache is based on [ChronicleMap on-disk |
| implementation](https://github.com/OpenHFT/Chronicle-Map). More instructions on |
| how to build and use the new module is available |
| [here](https://gerrit.googlesource.com/modules/cache-chroniclemap/). |
| |
| # Product Updates |
| |
| ## Project Members and ESC |
| |
| The Engineering steering committee had changed in October 2020: |
| |
| * Han-Wen Nienhuys replaced Alice Kober-Sotzek for the Google affiliation. |
| * Saša Živkov replaced David Pursehouse for the non-Google affiliation. |
| |
| We would like to thank Alice and David once again for their uniquely significant |
| contibutions to Gerrit. They will be missed. Yet we are happy to welcome Han-Wen |
| and Saša for these new roles alongside their lasting maintainer ones. Thanks for |
| joining our ESC! |
| |
| More information about the project members |
| [here](https://gerritcodereview.com/members.html#engineering-steering-committee). |
| |
| ## Default Java 11 Language Level |
| |
| The Java language level is now set to Java 11 by default for Gerrit. Java 8 is |
| still supported and can be used by doing a rebuild for Gerrit. |
| |
| ## Typescript Migration |
| |
| Gerrit’s Javascript codebase was recently migrated to Typescript. This would |
| allow for a lot of new benefits including class and module support, static type |
| checking and clear library API definition, among others. |
| |
| # Community |
| |
| ## Virtual Contributor Summit 2020 |
| |
| The Gerrit community had a virtual 2-days event with various talks and |
| discussions. The presentation slides and notes are available from the |
| [agenda](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WauJfNxracjBK3PxuVnwNIppESGMBtZwxMYjxxeDN6M). |
| |
