--- title: Thoughts about reviewing large patchsets | daily.dev description: A practical guide to reviewing large feature patchsets, covering overall principles and a detailed pre-submission checklist. Key principles include keeping... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/thoughts-about-reviewing-large-patchsets-eonj3cbvu twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Thoughts about reviewing large patchsets | daily.dev og:description: A practical guide to reviewing large feature patchsets, covering overall principles and a detailed pre-submission checklist. Key principles include keeping... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/thoughts-about-reviewing-large-patchsets-eonj3cbvu og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/eonj3cBVU.png og:image:alt: Thoughts about reviewing large patchsets og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Thoughts about reviewing large patchsets **[Collabora Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/collabora)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A practical guide to reviewing large feature patchsets, covering overall principles and a detailed pre-submission checklist. Key principles include keeping patches small, using automated tools, and doing high-level API review early. The checklist covers coding guidelines, namespacing, documentation comments, GObject Introspection annotations, pre/post-conditions, compiler warnings, usage examples, code formatting, automated tests, code coverage, Valgrind memory checks, installed tests, and commit message quality. Each checklist item is accompanied by a rationale explaining why it matters for code quality and review efficiency. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What should I check before submitting a large patchset for code review? A thorough pre-submission checklist includes: following coding and namespacing guidelines, adding complete documentation comments with GObject Introspection annotations, enforcing pre/post-conditions on public APIs, compiling without warnings using AX_COMPILER_FLAGS, providing usage examples, writing automated tests with coverage checks, running Valgrind for memory leaks, ensuring installed-tests are set up, passing make distcheck, and writing commit messages that explain why changes are made. _Developers preparing large patchsets track review standards and tooling practices on daily.dev._ ### Why should I run Valgrind on unit tests before submitting a patch? Running Valgrind on unit tests catches definite memory leaks automatically before review, avoiding the slow and mechanical process of catching them during code review. Higher test code coverage amplifies this benefit. Using g_autoptr() to automatically free memory when leaving a control block is a complementary technique to reduce leaks proactively. _Teams shipping C libraries keep up with memory safety tooling and review practices on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Being considerate of other people's time](https://daily.dev/posts/being-considerate-of-other-people-s-time-smiruvtow) · Planet PostgreSQL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [I Studied How Top 0.1% Engineering Teams Do Code Reviews](https://daily.dev/posts/i-studied-how-top-0-1-engineering-teams-do-code-reviews-vvo4rqfce) · System Design Newsletter · 25 upvotes · 4 comments - [Mistakes I see engineers making in their code reviews](https://daily.dev/posts/mistakes-i-see-engineers-making-in-their-code-reviews-uvlezwfro) · Lobsters · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [6 Best Practices for Human Reviewers: How to Review AI-Generated Code](https://daily.dev/posts/6-best-practices-for-human-reviewers-how-to-review-ai-generated-code-xuylblot0) · Aviator Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Lessons Learned From Code Review Remarks](https://daily.dev/posts/lessons-learned-from-code-review-remarks-vsgqh5vpk) · Software Testing Magazine · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#testing](https://daily.dev/tags/testing), [#code-review](https://daily.dev/tags/code-review) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/thoughts-about-reviewing-large-patchsets-eonj3cbvu) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Thoughts about reviewing large patchsets","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/thoughts-about-reviewing-large-patchsets-eonj3cbvu","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/thoughts-about-reviewing-large-patchsets-eonj3cbvu"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:56:51.196Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:11:26.513Z","description":"A practical guide to reviewing large feature patchsets, covering overall principles and a detailed pre-submission checklist. 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