View source for DevTools/ReviewTips

== General ==

== During Development ==

* Ask for feedback early. You can ask anyone for feedback, but asking a reviewer might speed up the process of getting review later
* Don't leave it until the last moment to write tests
* cedricv has some awesome code coverage tooling to make your tests better

== Mercurial ==

* Mercurial branches are a bit heavyweight for our development needs. MQ helps
* Your ~/.hgrc should include:

 [defaults]
 diff = -U 8 -p
 qdiff = -U 8
 qnew = -U
 
 [diff]
 git = 1
 showfunc = 1
 nodates = 1
 
 [extensions]
 fetch =
 hgext.graphlog =
 hgext.mq =
 color =
 rebase =

* Other nice things for your ~/.hgrc:

 [defaults]
 commit = --verbose
 blame = --user --date --quiet --number --line-number
 qseries = --summary
 
 [alias]
 qlog = log --stat -r qtip:qbase
 
 # http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ColorExtension
 [color]
 qseries.applied = green
 qseries.unapplied = yellow
 qseries.missing = red

== Getting Review ==

* Ask for review when you believe that it's ready to land, which means:
** Tests (which pass)
** A patch that cleanly applies to fx-team
** A patch with a message in the format 'Bug XXXXXX - Message' (pro-tip: cut and paste from the Bug page)

Other sources of hints and tips:
* [http://www.brianbondy.com/mozilla/cheatsheet/ Brian Bondy's Cheatsheet]
* [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Get_Involved FX-Team's 'Get Involved' Page]

== Headers ==

* Make sure each file starts with the standard copyright header (see [https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/boilerplate-1.1/ License Boilerplate])
** For work funded by Mozilla, the 'Initial Developer of the Original Code' should be 'The Mozilla Foundation'.
** Remember the year
** The first letter of contributors names should be under the 'n' of 'contributors'
** The original author of the code should have the string ' (original author)' after his/her email address

== CSS ==

* See [[DevTools/CSSTips]]

Reviewers:
* dao

== JavaScript ==

See:
* [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript_style_guide JavaScript Style Guide]
* [https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Mozilla_Coding_Style_Guide Mozilla Coding Style Guide]

Reviewers:
* dcamp
* msucan
* robcee

== Localization (l10n) / DTDs and Properties ==

* Moving files is annoying because localizers are language experts but not HG experts and they work off a different repo with a similar structure, so they have to mirror your file movements
* Reviewers: dcamp, msucan, robcee for normal work, but ask Axel Hecht (aka :pike, aka l10n) for file moves or anything significant
* All our strings files should begin with this stanza (See bug 689685)

 # The correct localization of this file might be to keep it in
 # English, or another language commonly spoken among web developers.
 # You want to make that choice consistent across the developer tools.
 # A good criteria is the language in which you'd find the best
 # documentation on web development on the web.