A self-hosted web app for commit-by-commit code review, written using Phoenix LiveView.
Learn what Remit is for and how to use it.
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.
This feature is still a work in progress. 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.
See this blog post: "The risks of feature branches and pre-merge code review"
We recommend putting Remit inside Fluid.app 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. 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.
- Let it launch the app.
- The URL should be
- 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_keyparameter. 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
- Enter the Remit URL as home page, including the
- Whitelist:
- 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.
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!
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.
Ready to set up Remit?
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.
# 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.
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.
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.
Did you use our old Review app? See priv/repo/migrate_from_review.exs.
Want to work on the Remit code?
Auctionet devs: This project is developed outside of the 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 a separate shell, get some fake data via the webhook:
mix wh.commits
mix wh.comments
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
Run
mix credo -a
to see what 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.
Vim: vim-elixir VSCode: Credo
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
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.
Run:
dev update
# or if you're not using devbox
script/updatedeps
Auctionet developers deploy by pushing to GitHub. CI will automatically migrate and deploy.
Please note that we use Heroku release phase – migrations run before the new app code is released.
Get a production IEX console:
script/prodc
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)
More than you wanted to know!
- Review commits
- remit in Oxford Dictionary of English:
- "an item referred to someone for consideration"
- "forgive (a sin)"
We've reimplemented this app a few times to try out new tech: