Looking Back on Phabricator for Code Review

2 days ago

The author reflects on various code review tools used throughout their career, including Phabricator, GitHub, GitLab, and Graphite.
Phabricator's color-coding for code changes (green for additions, red for deletions, light yellow for pure moves, dark yellow for moves with modified formatting) is praised for clarity.
A single vertical web page in Phabricator and Graphite for PR summaries and code changes is preferred over GitHub's tab-switching interface.
Phabricator's default draft comments and the need to submit at the end of a review is highlighted as a superior workflow compared to GitHub's Cmd-Enter requirement.
UI performance in Phabricator and Graphite is noted to be significantly faster than GitHub, especially in low-bandwidth situations.
Stacking PRs is mentioned as an important feature, with GitHub planning to introduce it soon.
The ease of viewing changes between amended updates in Phabricator and Graphite is contrasted with GitHub's less optimized experience.
The CLI experience with Phabricator's 'arc' and Graphite's 'gt' is praised for enhancing developer experience and simplifying PR management.
Despite its limitations, Phabricator's ethos is seen as living on in Graphite, which is considered a modern, improved version.
The author suggests that the future of PR reviews may need a completely new approach as coding becomes more automated.

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