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ex-remit

★ 50 Open GitHub ↗

A self-hosted web app for commit-by-commit code review, written using Phoenix LiveView.

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# Remit

A self-hosted web app for [commit-by-commit code review](https://thepugautomatic.com/2014/02/code-review/), written using [Phoenix](https://www.phoenixframework.org/) [LiveView](https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view).

## Table of contents

* [Usage](#usage)
  * [How it all works](#how-it-all-works)
  * [Why commit-by-commit code review?](#why-commit-by-commit-code-review)
  * [Setting up Fluid.app](#setting-up-fluidapp)
  * [Without Fluid.app](#without-fluidapp)
  * [Stats API](#stats-api)
* [Setup](#setup)
  * [Heroku setup](#heroku-setup)
  * [Adding webhooks](#adding-webhooks)
  * [Ignoring repos](#ignoring-repos)
  * [Automatically removing old data](#automatically-removing-old-data)
  * [Migrating from the "Review" app](#migrating-from-the-review-app)
* [Development](#development)
  * [Development setup](#development-setup)
  * [Faking new data coming in via webhook](#faking-new-data-coming-in-via-webhook)
  * [Working on the connection detection](#working-on-the-connection-detection)
  * [Updating dependencies](#updating-dependencies)
  * [Common production tasks](#common-production-tasks)
    * [Deploying](#deploying)
    * [IEX console](#iex-console)
* [Meta](#meta)
  * [The name](#the-name)
  * [What came before](#what-came-before)
  * [License](#license)

## Usage

Learn what Remit is for and how to use it.

### How it all works

You'll deploy your own copy of Remit to somewhere like Heroku, and you'll set up GitHub webhooks so it tells Remit about all commits and commit comments from then on.

This lets Remit show lists of commits and comments.

Clicking a commit opens the commit page on GitHub, where you can write comments either line-by-line or on the commit as a whole. You can mark commits as reviewed.

Remit also shows you comments and lets you mark these as resolved, so you don't miss the feedback you get. You'll see comments on commits you co-authored, replies in comment threads you've participated in, and @mentions. You can even @mention yourself if you look at your own commit and spot something.

When new commits and comments arrive, or when a co-worker starts and finishes a review, you see it all in real time.

Please see the "Settings" screen in Remit for details about how Remit figures out which user(s) every commit and comment belongs to.

### Co-Authorship
Remit has traditionally used "plus addressing" to extract the co-authors of a commit:

Given an email such as `devs+author1+author2@example.com`, we would extract `author1` and `author2` as the authors of the commit.

This has the drawback that contributions will not be tracked on GitHub, among other things.

We partially support `Co-authored-by` trailers, but only when the email is the GitHub-provided no-reply email.

To read more about commit trailers, [visit the GitHub documentation](https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/committing-changes-to-your-project/creating-and-editing-commits/creating-a-commit-with-multiple-authors).

### Why commit-by-commit code review?

See this blog post: ["The risks of feature branches and pre-merge code review"](http://thepugautomatic.com/2014/02/code-review/)

### Setting up Fluid.app

We recommend putting Remit inside [Fluid.app](https://fluidapp.com/) or equivalent so you can see Remit and the GitHub commit pages side-by-side. (We can't put GitHub inside an iframe, because they disallow it.)

Fluid.app is macOS only. Please do contribute instructions for other platforms.

* Install [Fluid.app](http://fluidapp.com/). You can use Homebrew: `brew install fluid`
* Launch Fluid.app, create a new app:
  * The URL should be `https://github.com`.
  * Use any name and icon you like – we recommend "Remit" and [this icon](assets/static/images/favicon.png).
  * Let it launch the app.
* Open your app's preferences and configure it like this:
  * Whitelist:
    * Allow browsing to any URL
  * Left:
    * Enter the Remit URL as home page, including the `auth_key` parameter. E.g. `https://MY-REMIT.herokuapp.com/?auth_key=MY_AUTH_KEY`
    * In new windows: make this panel visible
    * Navigation bar: is always hidden
    * Clicked links open in: current tab in current window
* Window > Show Left Browser Panel
* In the main app (e.g. "Remit") menu, choose "User Agent > Google Chrome" – otherwise GitHub may disable certain features, like commenting on a specific line.

### Without Fluid.app

Links to commits will open in the same browser window/tab every time. So after clicking a link the first time, you can put this tab/window side-by-side with the Remit window (typically by dragging the tab out of the tab bar into its own window).

It won't be as convenient as with Fluid.app, but good in a pinch!

### Stats API

If you want some statistics for e.g. a dashboard or a chat integration, there's an API endpoint you may be interested in.

Just visit `/api/stats?auth_key=MY_AUTH_KEY` for some statistics.

The key is whatever `AUTH_KEY` you defined when you set up the app.

## Setup

Ready to set up Remit?

### Heroku setup

These instructions were written after the fact, so we may have missed something. Please open an issue or make a PR if you have any issues!

We'll assume you have a Heroku account and the `heroku` [command-line tools](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli).

# Clone the repo.
    git clone https://github.com/barsoom/ex-remit.git
    cd ex-remit

# Create a Heroku app.
    # Pick a unique name.
    # Pick a region close to you, for lower latency: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/regions
    heroku apps:create my-remit --region eu --buildpack hashnuke/elixir

heroku buildpacks:add https://github.com/gjaldon/heroku-buildpack-phoenix-static.git

# Free plan with max 10 000 lines.
    # Probably good enough, because Remit can be configured to automatically remove old data.
    heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev

# The max on a free plan is 20.
    # We'll use 2 for one-off dynos like migrations and consoles, and 9 for the web dyno, so Heroku can run two side-by-side briefly during deploys.
    heroku config:set POOL_SIZE=9

# Change this to match your app name.
    heroku config:set HOST=my-remit.herokuapp.com

heroku config:set SECRET_KEY_BASE=`openssl rand -hex 32` AUTH_KEY=`openssl rand -hex 32` WEBHOOK_KEY=`openssl rand -hex 32`

# Provide a GitHub "personal access token" (https://help.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/creating-a-personal-access-token)
    # from an account with access to all repos you will use in Remit.
    # This lets Remit fetch missing associated commits and comments when it receives a comment by webhook.
    heroku config:set GITHUB_API_TOKEN="yourtoken"

# Optionally, set this to whatever value you prefer.
    # If you don't set it, nothing is removed automatically.
    heroku config:set REMOVE_DATA_OLDER_THAN_DAYS=100

# Deploy!
    git push heroku

# Resize the dyno if you want to.
    # On an "enterprise plan", your default and cheapest option may be "standard-1x" ($25/month).
    # On another plan, you might be able to get away with "free" ($0) or "hobby" ($7).
    # See: https://www.heroku.com/pricing
    heroku dyno:resize -a my-remit standard-1x

# Turn on Heroku Preboot if you like.
    # This means more seamless deploys to the user, with trade-offs: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/preboot
    heroku features:enable preboot -a ex-remit

Once it's set up, visit e.g. <https://your-remit.herokuapp.com?auth_key=YOUR_KEY>.

### Adding webhooks

Add a webhook on each reviewed repo in GitHub.

You can do it manually, or you can write a script to do it – you can use the `GITHUB_API_TOKEN` you configured above, and these GitHub API endpoints may be useful:

* <https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/#list-organization-repositories>
* <https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/hooks/#create-a-repository-webhook>

When added manually, the hook should be something like:

Payload URL: https://MY-REMIT.herokuapp.com/webhooks/github?auth_key=MY_WEBHOOK_KEY
    Content type: application/json
    Secret: (left empty – it's part of the URL instead)
    Select events:
    - Commit comments
    - Pushes

Note that this is the `WEBHOOK_KEY` and not the `AUTH_KEY`!

You should see a happy green checkmark on GitHub, and if you click the hook, "Recent Deliveries" should show a successful ping-pong interaction.

### Ignoring repos

If you use an organisation-level webhook (or otherwise can't easily limit which repos send webhooks to Remit), you can tell Remit to silently drop incoming webhooks from certain repos by setting `IGNORED_REPO_PREFIXES`. The value is a space- or comma-separated list of repo name prefixes. Any push or commit-comment event for a repo whose name starts with one of the prefixes is dropped before being processed.

For example, to ignore all repos starting with `interview-` or `spike-`:

heroku config:set IGNORED_REPO_PREFIXES="interview- spike-"

Defaults to empty (no repos ignored).

### Automatically removing old data

To avoid growing out of your DB plan, set e.g.

heroku config:set REMOVE_DATA_OLDER_THAN_DAYS=100

The app will schedule a recurring process (`Remit.Periodically`) to remove older data.

It will only remove old-enough reviewed commits, and their associated comments (whether or not the comment notifications are resolved, and independent of the age of the comments). This is a bit crude – pull requests welcome for further improvement.

### Migrating from the "Review" app

Did you use our old [Review app](https://github.com/barsoom/review)? See `priv/repo/migrate_from_review.exs`.

## Development

Want to work on the Remit code?

### Development setup

Auctionet devs: This project is developed *outside* of the [Devbox](https://github.com/barsoom/devbox) VM, at the time of writing. But feel free to add Devbox support.

First time:

# Ensure that `config/test.exs` and `config/dev.exs` have the right DB config for you.

# Set up the recommended Git hooks
    mix git_hooks.install

# Install deps and assets, create DB and migrate:
    mix setup

# Verify that tests run:
    mix test

# You can automatically run all tests or specific ones
    mix test.watch
    mix test.watch test/foo_test.exs
    mix test.watch test/foo_test.exs:123

# Start the server:
    mix phx.server

# In a separate shell, populate fake dev data:
    mix fake.teams
    mix wh.commits
    mix wh.comments

# Optionally, seed comment notifications addressed to your own GitHub username:
    mix fake.notifications YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME

Every time:

# Ensure you have the Node version given in .nvmrc, e.g. by installing "nvm" and doing this (TODO: Improve this by moving into Devbox):
    nvm install; nvm use

mix phx.server

Then visit <http://localhost:4000?auth_key=dev>

### Credo

Run

mix credo -a

to see what [Credo](https://github.com/rrrene/credo) has to say. (`-a` or `--all` means it won't truncate the list.)

It will also run in CI together with the unit tests, and in pre-push if you installed the githooks.

#### Editor integration

Vim: [vim-elixir](https://github.com/elixir-editors/vim-elixir)
VSCode: [Credo](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=pantajoe.vscode-elixir-credo)

### Faking new data coming in via webhook

Just run either or both of these commands:

mix wh.commits
    mix wh.comments

They default to adding just a few, but you can pass a count:

# Add 100 commits via one webhook call.
    mix wh.commits --count 100

# Add 100 comments via 100 webhook calls (GitHub sends one per call).
    # May not be listed exactly 100 times in the UI, because we list based on CommentNotifications.
    mix wh.comments --count 100

You can specify a repository name with `--repo <repo>`; otherwise, one will be generated.

It's also possible to generate co-authored commits using the `--co-authored` flag:

# Adds 10 co-authored commits using commit trailers, e.g. Co-authored-by: foo <foo@example.com>
    mix wh.commits --co-authored

You can also specify which users commits to generate comments for by passising the `--for-user` flag.

mix wh.comments --for-user username

Bear in mind that for this to work, there must exist commits by that username in the database. This can be accomplished by passing the `--author` flag when generating commits.

mix wh.commits --author username

### Working on the connection detection

You probably want to temporarily set `code_reloading: false` in dev.exs to make sure Phoenix code reloading doesn't come into it.

To trigger a disconnection detection in dev, you can load Remit, turn off the Phoenix server for several seconds, then turn it back on. This should be detected as a disconnection and the page should be automatically reloaded. See `app.js`.

### Updating dependencies

Run:

dev update
    # or if you're not using devbox
    script/updatedeps

### Common production tasks

#### Deploying

Auctionet developers deploy by pushing to GitHub. [CI](https://github.com/barsoom/ex-remit/actions?query=workflow%3ACI) will automatically migrate and deploy.

Please note that we use [Heroku release phase](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/release-phase) – migrations run *before* the new app code is released.

#### IEX console

##### Heroku

heroku run "POOL_SIZE=2 iex -S mix"

##### Auctionet Stack

For Auctionet (on [Reclaim the Stack](https://github.com/reclaim-the-stack)), see [internal docs](https://www.notion.so/Production-tasks-1533aa235d4e80c194d0c364202b6a91?pvs=4).

#### Adding a project to a team

Until there is a visual interface, run in the console:

`Remit.Team.add_project("team-slug", "repo-name")`

If you're not sure which team slugs are available, run:

`Remit.Team.get_all() |> Enum.map(& &1.slug)`

## Meta

More than you wanted to know!

### The name

* **Re**view com**mit**s
* *remit* in Oxford Dictionary of English:
  * "an item referred to someone for consideration"
  * "forgive (a sin)"

### What came before

We've reimplemented this app a few times to try out new tech:

* 2020: This one! Remit II in Phoenix LiveView (and also to try out [Tailwind](https://tailwindcss.com/))
* 2016: [Review](https://github.com/barsoom/review) in Phoenix/Elm
* 2014: [Remit I](https://github.com/henrik/remit) in Ruby on Rails with AngularJS and MessageBus
* 2014: [Hubreview](https://github.com/barsoom/hubreview) in Ruby on Rails with WebSockets

### License

[MIT](LICENSE.txt)

ex-remit

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