Our fourth sprint started out a little better, with us fixing the issues, stories and tasks assigned on Git so that our group could be more clear on what was being done and by whom. This also helps us communicate with the other food pantry group outside of class. Narrowing down our stories and tasks helped us more clearly define our goals and what we were working towards. Once we were done fixing the stories and tasks, we discussed who would be taking on what task.
I took on the task of adding a weight counter component to the intake form. We first had to determine exactly why the weight was being kept track of and what changes needed to be logged to better implement the weight system the food pantry needed. After determining some of the needs of our clients, I started working on making the new component. However, our group quickly ran into issues as we had a lot of difficulty in maintaining our git repository. We spent a good class period trying to fix some of the issues we were having just getting the working code onto our local machines.
As it turned out, our git.ignore file was located in the wrong place, and a lot of the local files that aren’t supposed to be uploaded and committed were being placed on the group repository. NPM and NG commands were not working properly and things were pretty disorganized. It was hard to get a working version of the front end so that I could begin to make my changes to it. After a long class discussion with the Professor, we discussed better ways to make sure the repository isn’t getting dirtied with unnecessary files, and talked about how to add changes to the main branch and utilize pull requests accordingly.
Now that we finally have a working copy of the form back on the repository, I have begun work on the weight counter again. It is going to be a new component that tracks a current weight, and can add/remove to the weight depending on user choice. Other considerations are storing the time and date that changes are made to the weight, and making descriptions for weight changes. Other future things to consider are logging which Student ID takes out weight so that customers can only receive from the food pantry once a day.
This sprint was very stressful as our group fully realized some of the issues that can arise from git repositories. Although it was mind-racking to try to figure out what the problem was, it was very useful exposure and practice to some of the mechanisms of git, as it will doubtlessly be very important in the future. Although I am still wary that I can use git commands perfectly, I am definitely much more equipped to deal with repository related issues in the future, and am more aware of some potential issues that can arise from a misplaced git.ignore file. Hopefully I can avoid some of these problems in the future, as git problems can get annoying fast.
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