Gerrit has special support for inline comments that are generated by automated third-party systems, so called "robot comments". For example robot comments can be used to represent the results of code analyzers.
In contrast to regular inline comments which are free-text comments, robot comments are more structured and can contain additional data, such as a robot ID, a robot run ID and a URL, see RobotCommentInfo for details.
It is planned to visualize robot comments differently in the web UI so that they can be easily distinguished from human comments. Users should also be able to use filtering on robot comments, so that only part of the robot comments or no robot comments are shown. In addition it is planned that robot comments can contain fixes, that users can apply by a single click.
REST endpoints
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Posting robot comments is done by the Set Review REST endpoint. The input for this REST endpoint can contain robot comments in its
robot_commentsfield.
Storage
Robot comments are stored per change in a
refs/changes/XX/YYYY/robot-comments ref, where XX/YYYY is the
sharded change ID.
Robot comments can be dropped by deleting this ref.
Limitations
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Robot comments are only supported with NoteDb, but not with ReviewDb.
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Robot comments are not displayed in the web UI yet.
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There is no support for draft robot comments, but robot comments are always published and visible to everyone who can see the change.
Part of Gerrit Code Review