Development Process – How to Avoid Typo Errors in Code

OK, so there are now more things here than are suitable for a comment.

tl;dr

Your intuition about what you ought to do (refactoring as you go) is correct.

Your difficulty implementing this - given that you have to work around a poor code review system - comes down to your difficulty manipulating your source code and VCS. Multiple people have said that you can and should split your changes (yes, even within files) into multiple commits, but you seem to have difficulty believing this.

You really can do this. That really is what we're suggesting. You really should learn to get the most out of your editing, source manipulation and version control tools. If you invest the time in learning how to use them well, it makes life much easier.

Workflow/office politics issues

I'd make essentially the same recommendation as GlenH7 that you create two commits - one with only refactorings and (demonstrably or obviously) no functional changes, and one with the functional changes in question.

It may be useful though, if you're finding lots of errors, to pick a single category of error to fix within a single CR. Then you have one commit with a comment like "dedupe code", "fix type-X errors", or whatever. Because this makes a single type of change, presumably in multiple places, it should be trivial to review. It does mean you can't fix every error you find, but may make it less painful to smuggle through.

VCS issues

Splitting the changes made to your working source into multiple commits shouldn't be a challenge. You haven't said what you're using, but possible workflows are:

1. if you're using git, you have excellent tools for this

   • you can use git add -i for interactive staging from the command line
   • you can use git gui and select individual hunks and lines to stage (this is one of the few VCS related GUI tools I actually prefer to the command line, the other being a good 3-way merge editor)
   • you can make lots of tiny commits (individual changes, or fixing the same class of bug in multiple places) and then reorder them, merge them or split them with rebase -i

2. if you're not using git, your VCS may still have tooling for this sort of thing, but I can't advise without knowing what system you use

   You mentioned you're using TFS - which I believe is compatible with git since TFS2013. It may be worth experimenting with using a local git clone of the repo to work in. If this is disabled or doesn't work for you, you can still import the source into a local git repo, work in there, and use it to export your final commits.

3. you can do it manually in any VCS if you have access to basic tools like diff and patch. It's more painful, but certainly possible. The basic workflow would be:

   1. make all your changes, test, etc.
   2. use diff to make a (context or unified) patch file with all changes since the last commit
   3. partition that into two files: you'll end up with one patch file containing refactorings, and one with functional changes
      • this isn't entirely trivial - tools such as emacs diff mode may help
   4. back everything up
   5. revert to the last commit, use patch to replay one of the patch files, commit those changes
      • NB. if the patch didn't apply cleanly, you may need to fix up the failed hunks manually
   6. repeat 5 for the second patch file

Now you have two commits, with your changes partitioned appropriately.

Note there are probably tools to make this patch management easier - I just don't use them since git does it for me.

This is a common problems with all source control systems. It is a communication problem, perhaps made worse by the ease with which extensive changes can be made globally. You have outlined the most common solutions:

• Make the work done in a feature branch smaller, so that it is easier to integrate, and compare to the main branch.
• Make it a priority to integrate feature branches as soon as possible. Don't allow branches to become stale.

Some other ideas:

• Don't allow "low-level refactoring and fixup work" in any branch except one, the most important branch.
• When you compare changes in a feature, only compare against the original source it was branched from. You may have to re-do the work to integrate.
• Anyone who is going to do extensive global changes must communicate with all other people working on all other branches. Try to get all branches merged before these types of changes are made. Put a freeze on further branching until it is completed.