The refs/notes/review namespace

Summary

refs/notes/review is a special reference that Gerrit creates on repositories to store information about code reviews.

When a repository is cloned from Gerrit, the refs/notes/review reference is not included by default. It has to be manually fetched:

$ git fetch origin refs/notes/review:refs/notes/review

It is also possible to configure git to always fetch refs/notes/review:

$ git config --add remote.origin.fetch refs/notes/review:refs/notes/review
$ git fetch

When refs/notes/review is fetched on a repository, the Gerrit review information can be included in the git log output:

$ git log --show-notes=review

For each commit, Gerrit stores the following review information in refs/notes/review:

The name and email address of the Gerrit user that submitted the change in RFC 2822 format.

Submitted-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>

The time the commit was submitted in RFC 2822 time stamp format.

Submitted-at: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:15:57 +0200

The URL to the change on the Gerrit server.

Reviewed-on: http://path.to.gerrit/12345

Review label and score, and the name and email address of the Gerrit user that gave it in RFC 2822 format:

Code-Review+2: A. N. Other <another@developer.example.org>
Verified+1: A. N. Other <another@developer.example.org>

Commonly used review labels are "Code-Review" and "Verified", but any label configured in Gerrit can be included.

All review labels and scores present on the change at the time of submit are included.

The name of the project in which the commit was made.

Project: kernel/common

The name of the branch on which the commit was made.

Branch: refs/heads/master