Our team has three seniors. We have 3 juniors and more coming up.
We want to have some set of organization in our git repos. I want the three of us to be required reviewers for the team repos, but we three should be able to merge pull requests for our codes without having to get it code reviewed by the other two.
I tried setting up a codeowners file in github with our team admin group as the codeowner, but it is making me unable to merge PRs for my code without the other two reviewing it. I can add our individual handles as code owners, but that would mean I would need to update every individual repo if we get a new admin or one of us goes away.
What is the best way to achieve what I’m looking for? Please advise.
Why do you think seniors don’t need their code reviewed?
Frankly, I’m the only (senior) programmer in the team, and the other two can write only serviceable python scripts, so I don’t need them to review my code. They are seniors in the data itself, and mostly add/maintain other kinds of files/repos like sqls and other data related files that I don’t need to review.
One good reason to have juniors review your code is for them to become familiar with not only the codebase itself, but best practices.
That’s a pretty bad take. Everyone can make mistakes, and different perspectives are always beneficial. Reviewing your code may give some of the other devs a chance to learn. Who knows, they may even catch a mistake that you may miss.
I’m by no means saying my code is above review, but I’m talking based on my current team’s make up.
Writers bias is real and even a less experienced set of eyes can spot a silly mistake that you’ve overlooked because you wrote it.
It’s also a good learning experience for juniors. Seeing more skillfully written code and being able to ask questions about why you took an approach.
This sounds more like a Github question.
I believe in GitHub branch protection rules, you can set required review by a code owner, as well as set an amount of reviews required.
You are also able to structure codeowner files and assign codeowners to certain paths within the repo that they “own”, rather than all or nothing.
You are able to set bypass rules for certain individuals, and as repo admin there is a little checkbox on PRs that will appear by default to allow you to ignore the requirements, although it is generally not recommended, but I won’t harp on the reasons others have already pointed out.
disclaimer: I mainly work on a GHES instance, which may be function slightly different than public GH
