But sometimes we can’t, and then we have to look elsewhere, like commit messages, pull requests, related discussions etc. What does this code do? A good indicator of health of the codebase is our ability to answer this question by analyzing the present state of the codebase the way the code is being used, names of files, classes, functions, variables, etc. Our questions can usually be narrowed down to the following two: However, that code might be difficult to reason with, so we want to familiarize ourselves with it first. Either way, we don’t want to break anything, we just want to solve our problem. Most of the times the unfamiliarity is due to the fact that it’s someone else’s code, but sometimes it can even be our own code from years ago. Our work often requires us to understand unfamiliar code perhaps we’re trying to resolve a merge conflict, or we’re experiencing a bug that we traced back to its source. I trust code more than I trust paragraphs, and I strongly believe that Git history can and should be used as a part of documentation. Chances are that it’s not so great, and that’s ok! It’s hard to maintain a good development documentation, to me it even feels somewhat unnatural. Let’s start by examining the quality of the development documentation in our project, and by “development documentation” I mean the one that’s intended for people developing that project. ![]() I wanted to write about the short and long term value of committing code, but I don’t want this series of posts to be just another set of Git commands, I want to explain why we’re doing this before we start geeking out. This history increases in value the older that project gets it is a unique archive of collaboration and hard work that describes how the project became what it is today. Git is an indispensable tool for recording the history of our source code. The Importance of Git History Published on October 3rd, 2019
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