In most software development projects, code is stored in Git, and code reviews can be easily conducted in a lightweight fashion using GitHub pull requests.
With Appian there is no easy or intuitive way to do this. The only way to review code (that we have found) is to review the object in its totality. For expressions and interfaces you can manually comb through the Version history, pick out the prior definition, and run it through a text diff tool locally, but this is tedious, and doesn't allow collaboration as easily. For process models, it is impossible, which is another reason we try to make our models as small as possible and do everything in SAIL.
Has anyone built a tool for enabling efficient and collaborative code reviews, or is this just generally accepted as a limitation of the Appian product and an impediment to generating high quality code?
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Hi, I am struggling with the same issue now. I am new to Appian. Is there a way to do code reviews in Appian as in tradition development? Has anyone have any comment to share with me?
The code in Appian is not exactly code that is similar to traditional development.
You can do code reviewing using compare versions. It's pretty neat:
Hi Shyam, thank you for your reply. As in a Java project, can we see a detailed commit history like who/when changed which files? And most important, can we create a development branch and then merge it to a master branch?
Each individual object has its own version history, with change date and user who made the change. Thankfully we can now pull a DIFF between any two arbitrary versions of the object tyeps that are DIFFable and this is very informative when needed. These objects are not stored as "files" per se, as you'll find when you gain more experience with using Appian. I'd suggest you become a bit more familiar with what an Appian environment *is*, and what goes on inside of it, before taking on issues as nuanced and complex as this one.
There is the AQuAMan application on the AppMarket which is designed to conduct Appian "code" reviews. You can define your own object standards and compare a patch (or an entire Application) against these standards.