If you want to view all patches to the Android Open Source Project, or if you are reviewing or verifying a change, look in the AOSP Gerrit. For more information on how to find a specific change, see Gerrit Code Review - Searching Changes.

Reviewing a change

If you are assigned to be the Reviewer for a change, you need to determine the following:

• Does this change fit within this project's stated purpose?
• Is this change valid within the project's existing architecture?
• Does this change introduce design flaws that will cause problems in the future?
• Does this change follow the best practices that have been established for this project?
• Is this change a good way to perform the described function?
• Does this change introduce any security or instability risks?

If you approve of the change, mark it with LGTM ("Looks Good to Me") within Gerrit.

Verifying a change

If you are assigned to be the Verifier for a change, you need to do the following:

• Patch the change into your local client using one of the Download commands.
• Build and test the change.
• Within Gerrit select the Reply button. This brings up a comment box where you can mark the change as Verified or not, and add a message explaining what problems were identified.

Downloading changes from Gerrit

A submission that has been verified and merged will be downloaded with the next repo sync. If you wish to download a specific change that has not yet been approved, run

repo download TARGET CHANGE

where TARGET is the local directory into which the change should be downloaded and CHANGE is the change number as listed in Gerrit. For more information, see the Repo reference .

How do I become a Verifier or Reviewer?

In short, contribute high-quality code to one or more of the Android projects. For details about the different roles in the Android Open Source community and who plays them, see Project Roles.

Diffs and comments

To open the details of the change within Gerrit, click on the Id number or Subject of a change. To compare the established code with the updated code, click the file name under Side-by-side diffs.

Adding comments

Anyone in the community can use Gerrit to add inline comments to code submissions. A good comment will be relevant to the line or section of code to which it is attached in Gerrit. It might be a short and constructive suggestion about how a line of code could be improved, or it might be an explanation from the author about why the code makes sense the way it is.

To add an inline comment, double-click the relevant line of the code and write your comment in the text box that opens. When you click Save, only you can see your comment.

To publish your comments so that others using Gerrit will be able to see them, click the Publish Comments button. Your comments will be emailed to all relevant parties for this change, including the change owner, the patch set uploader (if different from the owner), and all current reviewers.