What is a Code Walk-Through?

A code walk-through is often called a peer code review. The typical scenario is when the developer of the code wishes to "Hand Over" the code to another developer or team of developers OR the developer wishes to have her code reviewed by her peers. In many cases, the developer and her peers will be in the same location so there is a face-to-face meeting in which the code is discussed with the aid of source code printouts or slides.

However, very often this isn't the case. The developer and her peers many be in different locations, making the code walk-through that much more difficult. Typical solutions to this problem are the use of tools such as Windows Remote Desktop, VNC (and other remote control software) and online services like GoToMeeting.com and CoPilot.

CodeRamble is a free open-source solution which you can use here or download and install on your own web server.

CodeRamble ~ Making code walk-throughs a walk in the park.

Introduction

CodeRamble is a simple web-based tool for performing code-walkthroughs. CodeRamble lets you share source code with others and guide others to parts of the source code. CodeRamble is meant to be used in conjunction with voice communication (one-to-one or conference phone calls).

How it works

The Developer who wishes to perform the walk-through - that is, who wishes to drive the session - visits the controller page and uploads one or more source files. When the source files have uploaded, the developer can click on any of the source file links and the source code will be displayed in the window. A link will appear at the top of the page which other participants can use to view the same source file. The developer should send this link to all participants so that they can see what the developer sees.

Whenever the developer clicks on a source file link, it is displayed in the developer's browser and it will also be displayed in the browser of all participants..

The developer can talk through the source code via a conference call to all participants. When the developer clicks on any line of code in the source listing, all other participants will see the same line of code - the page which each participant sees, will scroll to the line of code on which the developer clicked.

Try it out

You can try CodeRamble for yourself here.

Download

You can download CodeRamble here. This software is provided as-is with no implied warranty.

Acknowledgements

CodeRamble uses Yahoo's User Interface Javascript Library and the wonderful dp.SyntaxHighlighter from Alex Gorbatchev.