Gerrit Community Survey 2021

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ekempin@google.com (Gerrit community manager),�mharbach@google.com (Gerrit UXR)

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June 2021

Research objectives

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Understand key properties of Gerrit use in the community:

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Since 2019:

• which version they use,
• the size of the installation,
• plugin use,
• relevant integrations,
• overall satisfaction,
• pain points, and
• attitudes towards contributing back to the community.

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New in this edition:

• which other Git hosting solution is used in parallel,
• why the organization chose Gerrit,
• personal and organizational satisfaction, and
• understanding the need for cross-host features

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Other changes

• Used “your organization” instead of “you” for most of the questions in the survey
• Allowed number entry for user counts

Study design

Survey

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Sent out an invitation email to repo-discuss@ (4,569 members), asking respondents to only fill one survey per organization.

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In 2019, participants were invited from two sources:

• People registered for the two Gerrit User Summits in Gothenburg and Sunnyvale (a total of 127 people across 30 organisations).
• Afterwards, invited all subscribers of the repo-discuss list (4,210 people) to participate.

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2019 results

N=36 respondents/organisations total

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• This is roughly in line with the 31 respondents from repo-discuss@ in the previous edition. There were a total of 50 respondents last time, due to the additional invitations during the summits.

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Caveat: We do not have a good idea of how many organisations are using Gerrit overall, so we cannot know to what extend the overall user base is represented in these results.

Method

Respondents

Results

• Most respondents self-identify as Gerrit admins. Often, they also take care of the entire toolchain at the same time.
• Most (but not all!) also personally use Gerrit for code review purposes.
• About a third of respondents has developed custom integrations or plugins.

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Respondents’ Roles

• Most respondents have been using Gerrit for 5 or more years. This proportion has increased from last edition, possibly due to the differences in recruiting.

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• 3 organizations have started using Gerrit recently, similar to the findings of the 2019 edition.

Gerrit Use

2019

A considerable 25 of the 36 overall respondents indicate that their organization uses another Git host product. 11 indicate to use multiple additional Git hosting products. Only 10 rely solely on Gerrit.

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Other Git hosting products

15 respondents indicate that their organization uses another version control system besides Git. 9 of these also use another code review system besides Gerrit.

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SVN is the predominantly used alternate system, which, given SVN’s age, points to legacy installations being a major reason for this observation.

Other version control systems

• In comparison to 2019, the proportion of organizations using a more recent Gerrit version has increased. Only 10 organizations still run a pre-3.0 version. Interestingly, 6 of these already run multiple versions, including more recent one. This suggests preparations for a migration may be under way.
• 8 organizations only use versions that have reached their EOL. Another 5 use those together with more recent versions.

Gerrit Versions

2019

This new question shines some light on upgrade blockers. Concern for breakages, a lack of time as well as the need to also migrate custom integrations/custom patches are the most prevalent reasons. Several respondents also note that they are already planning to go to a more recent version later this year.

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A cumbersome upgrade process, the implied downtime and previous bad experiences are less frequent, but common concerns as well.

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Upgrade Blockers

Hosts and Users

61 %�of organisations have more than one Gerrit host (62% in 2019).

14 %�of organisations have more than 10 Gerrit hosts (20% in 2019).

56 %�of organisations have less than 500 Gerrit users (57% in 2019)

27 %�of organisations have more than 5,000 Gerrit users (16% in 2019).

> 75k�Gerrit users�(conservative estimate was >45k in 2019)

81 %�of organisations have no full-time Gerrit admin.

• All respondents use CI/CD integrations. Hopefully, the new Checks UI can provide value for these organizations.
• In contrast to 2019, only one third of respondents indicate that code review is mandatory with the majority citing flexibility at the project level.

Integrations, Code Review

100 %�of organisations report having some form of CI/CD integration (94% in 2019).

77 %�of organisations report having some form of issue tracker integration (80% in 2019).

33 %�of organisations report having mandatory code review (63% in 2019).

58 %�of organisations report deciding whether or not to require code review per project (33% in 2019).

11 of 22 respondents on this question indicate having teams working across hosts. 8 of them further detail that that they would mostly benefit from cross-host user accounts. Other cross-host features are not commonly mentioned.

Cross Host Usage

The majority of installations prefers case insensitive names, so we may consider making this the default. Still, a significant amount of installations needs case sensitive names, so we likely cannot drop support for this completely.

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Case insensitive usernames

Plugins / integrations

Core Plugins

Core plugins are all quite popular

Plugins

Many Gerrit installation have an issue tracker integration

Plugins

Gerrit core lacks support to manage project lifecycles

Custom Plugins

Reasons for custom plugins permeate all parts of Gerrit, including extra workflow steps, validation, integration with other systems, layout and replication.

General Satisfaction

88 %�of respondents report being personally somewhat or very satisfied with Gerrit overall.*

4 % �of organisations report feel somewhat dissatisfied with Gerrit overall.

60 %�of respondents report believing that their organization is somewhat or very satisfied with Gerrit overall.*��* these are biased numbers: unsatisfied people are less likely to continue to use Gerrit and also less likely to respond to the survey.

Most respondents indicate that code review features and the commit-based workflow are the most important reasons for using Gerrit at their organization.

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Flexibility/Extensibility was least important with only 10% selecting it as rank 1 or 2.

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Participants were also able to specify own reasons for choosing Gerrit, which did not surface reasons beyond the ones above.

Reasons for using Gerrit

• Reliability, Stability and Performance are respondents’ top areas for improvements
• In comparison to 2019, features are mentioned as more or most important by less participants.
• The Upgrade process, administration and flexibility are of relatively least importance.

Areas of Improvement

2019

The administration support and effort questions were newly added to the survey in this edition.

• Access and permission management is perceived as well supported by a majority of respondents.
• Respondents are split on support for upgrading and managing integrations.
• User management is perceived to be poorly supported by a majority of respondents.

Administration

How well does Gerrit support the following administration tasks?

• Regarding the amount of time it takes to administer Gerrit compared to other systems, respondents were almost equally split between Gerrit needing more time (31%), the same amount of time (33%) and less time (36%). We can speculate that this likely depends on a number of organizational factors, like the size of the installation or number of integrations.

Administration

• Only 5.6% of organisations don't see a need to contribute, which means the other 94.4% at least consider contributing. Given that only 13.9% do contribute, there seems to be some unused potential for contributions.
• Knowledge gaps still are a top blocker
• Lack of time still second-most important, less prevalent
• Organizational policies and perceived difficulties in the development & contribution process somewhat common.
• In the next edition, we should add more options to this question (e.g. "feeling not welcomed by the community", "tried contributing, but didn't receive reviews").

Barriers to Contribution

2019

• Review features and the associated workflow are most appreciated -- main differentiator over other code review systems?
• Similar to 2019 results
• Upgrading, UX/UI improvements and the admin experience are most important to improve.
• In contrast to 2019, none of the aspects is mentioned much more frequently than others. Last time, UI improvements were mentioned almost twice as frequently as other aspects.

What do you like most / least about Gerrit?

Like Most

18 - Review features and workflow

5 - CI integration

3 - ACLs

2 - Submit requirements

2 - Free / open-source

2 - Scalability

Like Least

5 - Upgrades

4 - UX/UI improvements

4 - Administration

4 - Scalability

3 - Gitiles

3 - User management

2 - ACL management

Open-ended answers labeled manually, reporting only those with at least two mentions (>5%)

Summary

Using Gerrit in combination with other Git hosting products appears common. 9 of 36 organisations also still have an active SVN installation.

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28% of organisations run a Gerrit version that has reached its end-of-life. This proportion is stable from the last edition of this survey. Upgrading remains a pain point for organizations.

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Code review features and the commit-based workflow are the most important aspects for organizations to adopt Gerrit.

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80% of respondents are satisfied with Gerrit. However, only 60% think that their organization is also satisfied with Gerrit overall. One reason could be that developers often prefer a branch-based workflow.

Summary and Recommendations

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