  Context: Software code review aims to early find code anomalies and to
perform code improvements when they are less expensive. However, issues and
challenges faced by developers who do not apply code review practices regularly
are unclear. Goal: Investigate difficulties developers face to apply code
review practices without limiting the target audience to developers who already
use this practice regularly. Method: We conducted a web-based survey with 350
Brazilian practitioners engaged on the software development industry. Results:
Code review practices are widespread among Brazilian practitioners who
recognize its importance. However, there is no routine for applying these
practices. In addition, they report difficulties to fit static analysis tools
in the software development process. One possible reason recognized by
practitioners is that most of these tools use a single metric threshold, which
might be not adequate to evaluate all system classes. Conclusion: Improving
guidelines to fit code review practices into the software development process
could help to make them widely used. Additionally, future studies should
investigate whether multiple metric thresholds that take source code context
into account reduce static analysis tool false alarms. Finally, these tools
should allow their use in distinct phases of the software development process.
