Revspan for Bitbucket

Review a Bitbucket Cloud pull request version by version, right inside VS Code.

When an author amends, rebases and force-pushes on every round of feedback, Bitbucket only shows the full diff against the target branch. Revspan finds every pushed version of the PR and shows what the author really changed between two versions, without the noise brought in by rebases.

Features

• Review queue in the "My PRs" view in the activity bar, in five groups: To review (PRs needing your review), To rebase (your PRs whose destination branch moved since their base), My PRs, Waiting on the author (you approved, or your approval still holds after rebase-only pushes) and Other open PRs. A PR needs review while it has fewer approvals than the minimum (2 by default), counted like Bitbucket's merge rule, your approval included. Where you are a designated reviewer, the PR stays in "To review" until you approve it, or until you request changes and only neutral pushes follow. Draft PRs go to "Other open PRs" (yours stay with your PRs) and never notify.
• Followed contributors: follow an author from a PR row, from the PR page or from Settings (Add). Their PRs come first and can notify you. Once you follow someone, "To review" lists only the PRs of followed authors, the ones where you are a designated reviewer and the ones you reviewed that changed since; while you follow nobody, every PR needing review is listed.
• Hide unfollowed contributors (on by default): PRs of authors you do not follow are left out of the view and the home page, and a line in the view tells how many are hidden (click it to open the settings). Your own PRs, designated reviews and PRs you reviewed or approved always stay. Nothing is hidden while you follow nobody.
• Notifications for a new PR needing review, a new code version on a PR you reviewed, and (optionally) a failed build on your PRs. See "Notifications" below.
• Build status from any CI that publishes statuses to Bitbucket: a badge on the cards and in the PR header, and a "Builds" tab.
• Needs rebase flag on your own PRs when the destination branch moved; they are listed in "To rebase".
• Grouping of "To review" and "Other open PRs" by repository, contributor or not at all (the choice is remembered separately for the view and for the page).
• Version timeline: one dot per push, rebases detected, with a summary of each version (code, dependencies only, rebase only, message only).
• Comparison of any two versions, or of a version with its base, with the rebase noise removed.
• Review resume: last reviewed version, new versions and new comments since, files already seen.
• Comments: threads placed on the displayed version, replies, resolution, new comments on a line of the latest version.
• Approve or request changes, showing which version each person approved.
• Open file: opens the file from the repository cloned in your workspace, at the line. The clone is found by its Bitbucket remote, then by folder name. A git worktree checked out on the PR's branch is preferred.
• VS Code diff: opens a file's comparison in the native diff editor, with syntax highlighting.

Requirements

• A Bitbucket Cloud account (bitbucket.org).
• Your Atlassian e-mail and an API token with scopes, created at https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens ("Create API token with scopes", Bitbucket app), with these scopes: read:user:bitbucket, read:repository:bitbucket, read:pullrequest:bitbucket and write:pullrequest:bitbucket.

Getting started

1. Click the Revspan icon in the activity bar, then Set up the token (or run Revspan: Settings (token, repositories)).
2. In ⚙ Settings, enter your Atlassian e-mail and the token, then click "Test connection".
3. List the repositories to follow, one workspace/repository per line.
4. Pick a PR in "My PRs", or run Revspan: Open a PR (URL) and paste a pull request URL.

Commands

Settings

The repositories, per-repository minimum, followed contributors, hiding of unfollowed contributors, notification options and refresh interval are restricted settings: an untrusted workspace cannot change them.

After updating the extension, reload the window (Developer: Reload Window) before changing a new setting from the Revspan settings page: until then VS Code does not know it, and the page asks you to reload.

Notifications

• New PR needing review: opened by a followed contributor, or you are a designated reviewer.
• New version: code or dependencies changed on a PR you reviewed or approved. Rebase-only pushes never notify.
• Build failed: one of your own PRs ("To rebase" or "My PRs") has a failing build (off by default).

Hiding unfollowed contributors changes only what is listed: notifications are the same either way.

Revspan raises one notification per PR and commit, even with several VS Code windows. Nothing is shown on first run, and switching an option on does not replay the backlog. At most 3 notifications are shown at a time, followed by a summary. The background refresh starts with VS Code and is skipped while all notifications are off and neither the view nor the panel is visible.

Build status and rebase

Revspan reads the statuses Bitbucket shows on the PR's latest commit, whatever CI publishes them. For an hour after a push they are read again on each refresh, so a CI that starts after another one is not missed. Two trade-offs: a re-run on the same commit later than that shows when you open the PR page (or with Refresh for your own PRs), and a CI that posts its first status more than 1 hour after the push is shown as "no build" on the home view for that commit. "Needs rebase" compares the destination branch head, read once per repository and refresh interval, with the PR's base.

Language

The interface follows VS Code's display language: French if it starts with fr, English otherwise. The PR page shown in the panel uses the same language.

Privacy

• Revspan sends no telemetry.
• Network traffic goes only to the Bitbucket API, plus the images embedded in PR comments, which are loaded from where Bitbucket hosts them. Revspan never calls a CI service.
• A background refresh runs from VS Code startup, every revspan.refreshIntervalMinutes minutes, to keep the view and the notifications up to date. It makes no request while all notifications are off and neither the view nor the panel is visible.
• Notifications are local VS Code messages. Nothing is sent anywhere to produce them.
• Your API token is stored in VS Code's SecretStorage. SecretStorage is shared across VS Code profiles, so the token is the same in every profile, while revspan.repositories is per profile. The token is never sent to the PR page shown in the panel.
• Local data lives in the extension's storage on your machine: reviewed versions, seen files, cached commit contents, the notifications already shown, a cached copy of each PR's activity as the home reads it (pushes with their source and destination: branch names, repositories and commit hashes; approvals and change requests: user id and date; comments: id, date, author id and reply link; never any comment text), and home.json, the last computed home, shared by your windows. home.json holds PR titles and author names and is written with file mode 0600. Next to it, home.lock (which window computes the home) and home.drop (a counter bumped after each of your writes) hold no PR data.

Limits

• Bitbucket Cloud only. Bitbucket Server and Data Center are not supported.
• Bitbucket eventually deletes the commits overwritten by a force-push. These versions stay in the timeline, marked "unavailable", and cannot be compared.
• Comments can only be added on a line of the latest version.
• The first 200 open PRs of a repository are read; beyond that, the view says the list was cut.
• "Open file" needs a repository cloned on disk, so it is unavailable in virtual workspaces. In an untrusted workspace, the list of repositories defined by the workspace is ignored.