Status: Commit reviewing is quite solid. Comment viewing is still a bit rough. See outstanding issues.

Remit is a web app for commit-by-commit code review of GitHub repositories. A modern, live UI thanks to AngularJS and message_bus.

It's super easy to set up on a free Heroku instance.

Keeps track of what has been reviewed and links to GitHub commits for the actual review.

Also tracks comments on commits.

Demo

Review the Remit commits using Remit:

https://remit-on-remit.herokuapp.com/?auth_key=demo

Please keep in mind that it's meant to be used within Fluid.app so you get a GitHub panel on the side.

Why commit-by-commit review?

If you think truly continuous integration and delivery (perhaps with feature flags) is important, you may prefer not to work with pull requests as a rule.

If you don't work with pull requests, commit-by-commit review is what you get. It has some benefits and some downsides compared to review by pull request.

Read more in this blog post: "The risks of feature branches and pre-merge code review".

The name

• Review commits
• Dictionary meanings like
  • "an item referred to someone for consideration"
  • "forgive (a sin)"

Development

Assumes you have

• Ruby 2.1.4
• Bundler
• Redis

Run:

bundle
bin/rake db:setup

# In a background tab (since it'll run in the foreground),
# unles it's already running.
redis-server

bin/rails server

Visit http://localhost:3000

Fake incoming webhooks

rake dev:commits N=3   # 3 new commits from GitHub
rake dev:comments N=3  # 3 new comments from GitHub
rake dev:deploy        # Heroku says it deployed

Import a production DB into dev

# One-time setup
heroku addons:add pgbackups:auto-month  # Free

# Every time you want to import
rake dev:db

You may need to exit local Rails consoles and servers to avoid an error about DB being in use.

See what a full payload looks like

See db/seeds/push.json (commits) and db/seeds/commit_comment.json (comments).

Test

# In a background tab (since it'll run in the foreground),
# unles it's already running.
redis-server

# Full suite
rake

# Only Ruby tests, skip JS unit tests
rake spec

# Only JS unit tests (Jasmine in a headless browser)
# Yes, you need to provide the RAILS_ENV: https://github.com/searls/jasmine-rails/issues/121
RAILS_ENV=test rake spec:javascript

# The same JS unit tests in a headful browser
# Assumes you've started a dev server with bin/rails server
open http://localhost:3000/specs

Production

Set the app up on Heroku

We assume you have a Heroku account.

# Customize this. It must be unique and will be your Heroku subdomain.
HEROKU_NAME="remit-SOMETHING-UNIQUE"

# No customizations required below

heroku new $HEROKU_NAME

AUTH_KEY=`ruby -rsecurerandom -e "puts SecureRandom.urlsafe_base64"`
WEBHOOK_KEY=`ruby -rsecurerandom -e "puts SecureRandom.urlsafe_base64"`

heroku config:set AUTH_KEY=$AUTH_KEY WEBHOOK_KEY=$WEBHOOK_KEY SECRET_KEY_BASE=`rake secret`

# DB. Free plan with max 10,000 rows.
heroku addons:add heroku-postgresql:dev

# For message_bus. Free plan, 25 MB.
heroku addons:add rediscloud

heroku addons:add deployhooks:http --url=https://$HEROKU_NAME.herokuapp.com/heroku_webhook?auth_key=$WEBHOOK_KEY

git push heroku master
heroku run rake db:schema:load

If you want to use Honeybadger for exception tracking, also do

heroku config:set HONEYBADGER_API_KEY=your_key_as_provided_by_honeybadger

You need to customize that key, of course.

Configure the webhook on GitHub

Working at Barsoom? We've got you covered.

Not so fortunate? In the settings for any repo you want to use this with, add a webhook:

Payload URL:   https://remit-SOMETHING-UNIQUE.herokuapp.com/github_webhook?auth_key=MY_WEBHOOK_KEY
Content type:  application/json
Let me select individual events:  [x] Push  [x] Commit comment

Where MY_WEBHOOK_KEY is whatever you assigned above (see it again with heroku config:get WEBHOOK_KEY).

If you just set the app up with the instructions above, you can get the URL into your clipboard like this on OS X:

echo https://$HEROKU_NAME.herokuapp.com/github_webhook?auth_key=$WEBHOOK_KEY | pbcopy && echo "Copied: `pbpaste`"

Reload clients automatically

To reload clients automatically when you deploy to Heroku, change the version number in config/application.rb.

If you've set up a Heroku deploy webhook per the instructions above, it will be called after deploy and generate a message_bus message with the new version number. That message causes clients to reload if they're running a different version.

Import reviewed state from Hubreview

Did you use our predecessor Hubreview?

Run this in a Heroku console in the Hubreview repo:

json = Revision.where(reviewed: true).pluck(:name, :in_review_at, :created_at, :review_time).map { |n,ra,ca,rt| { sha: n, at: ((ra || ca) + rt.to_i).to_i } }.to_json; nil
File.write("tmp/json", json)
`scp tmp/json you@your-server`

And this in Remit:

`scp you@your-server:json tmp/json`
raw = File.read("tmp/json"); raw.length
data = JSON.parse(raw); data.first
data.each { |x| Commit.where(sha: x["sha"]).where("reviewed_at IS NULL").update_all(reviewed_at: Time.at(x["at"])) }

Remove old data automatically

Running out of space on the free Heroku DB plan? See app/models/remove_old_commits_and_comments.rb.

Use with Fluid.app

Remit is intended to be used side-by-side with a GitHub pane.

This is sadly not possible with regular frames or iframes, as GitHub doesn't allow embedding. But it can be achieved with Fluid.app.

Fluid.app is for OS X. Please do contribute instructions for other platforms.

• Install Fluid.app.
• Launch Fluid.app, create a new app:
  • The URL should be http://github.com.
  • Use any name and icon you like. It defaults to the GitHub icon.
  • Let it launch the app.
• Open your app's preferences and configure it like this:
  • Whitelist:
    • Allow browsing to any URL
  • Panel Preferences:
    • New windows automatically display visible Panels from previous window
    • Panel split divider style: thin (a purely aesthetic choice; may need a restart of the app to kick in)
  • The first of the two "Browsa" panels:
    • Enter the Remit URL as home page, including the auth_key parameter. E.g. https://remit-SOMETHING-UNIQUE.herokuapp.com/?auth_key=MY_AUTH_KEY
    • Navigation bar: is always hidden
    • Clicked links open in: current tab in current window
• In the "Panels" menu, select the first Browsa panel to show it
• Drag the divider until it looks good

Remit will automatically remove the target="_blank" from links when Fluid.app is detected, so "current tab in current window" does the right thing.

There have been reports of issues with GitHub inside Fluid.app (e.g. not being able to write line comments) on OS X Mountain Lion. If you have those issues, upgrade to OS X Mavericks or later.

API

There is an API:

/api/v1/unreviewed_commits?auth_key=something gives you JSON data like

{
  count: 123,
  oldest_timestamp: "2015-01-01T12:00:00Z",
  oldest_age_in_seconds: 12345,
}

suitable e.g. for displaying on a dashboard.

CircleCI

We use CircleCI for Continuous Integration and Deployment. If you're interested how we set it up, contact us.

Credits

• Mostly by Henrik Nyh
• Very much inspired by Hubreview by Joakim Kolsjö
• Victor Arias
• Tomas Skogberg

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Henrik Nyh

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.