Git Tools for Troubleshooting and Debugging 

When you join a new project and can see hundreds of classes and modules, it might be confusing how things work together and where to start from. In this article, I am going to talk about some pieces of advice to get the most out of Git tools rather than specific technical topics.

It is beautiful to identify a couple of lines of code in a large code base which explains the system behavior, isn’t it? 

Once you’ve identified classes and modules that might be related, it is time to give the tools like Git Blame and Git History a try. Git Blame can be used in many other ways except just blaming someone. You can use it to retrieve the information you need.

Powerful Combination 

A lot of projects follow the practice to include a Jira ticket in the commit message. Git and Jira or any other project management tool are a very powerful combination. The functionality may seem completely incorrect. Once you review a related Jira ticket, it might make much more sense.

As an example, let’s say that you would like to investigate why the archive action is missing on the purchase orders page for the specific user. Blaming can explain the purpose of code change. It may tell you that the action is missing either because of extending the archive functionality or the permission change. 

Do not forget about unit tests.

Developers write unit tests for a lot of reasons. Confirming and documenting the behavior is among them. Please consider the test suite as an explanation of the code changes rather than just a tool that succeeds and fails. 

Navigating by code commits with Git Blame and Git History is also a great idea to follow the evolution of a class and module over time. Will you catch the places for refactoring in the future? Will you learn a new pattern to be reused in your next implementation? Any outcome will be helpful and useful for you anyway. 

To sum up, you can easily get a full picture of a project or an approach with simple well-known git tools.

At Swan Software Solutions, we use many tools and technologies. Our goal is to create reliable, scalable, and affordable applications. To discover more about how our team can help your team, schedule a free assessment.