Working with Parallel Branches

This week in my Open Source Development course, I was tasked with adding two new features to my Open Source project repo, TILerator, while working on these features in separate branches and merging them once complete. TILerator is a command-line tool that is able to convert .txt or .md files into a .html file with the correct HTML tags.

New Features

Adding Appropriate Error/Exit Codes for All Cases

The first feature I decided to implement was appropriate exit codes throughout my program. Initially, I had a console.log() message describing the state of the program (success/failure), but adding these exit codes provides a more robust method of identifying errors. The program now exits with a code of 0 upon a successful execution and a non-zero exit code (-1) in case of errors. The merge commit can be found here.

else if (input.length === 1 && !input[0].startsWith("-")) {
    utils.determinePath([input[0]]);
    process.exit(0);
  } else {
    console.error(
      "Invalid arguments provided. Enter TILerator --help for more information.\n"
    );
    process.exit(-1);
  }

Adding Support for Inline and Fenced Code Blocks

The second feature I decided to implement was support for inline/fenced code blocks for .md files.
The merge commit can be found here.

For inline code blocks: Text that is enclosed by a single backtick

`console.log(`TILerator tool version: ${version}`);`

would get rendered as

<code>console.log(`TILerator tool version: ${version}`);</code>

For fenced code blocks: Text that is enclosed by 3 backticks

    ```


    console.log(`TILerator tool version: ${version}`);


    ```

would get rendered as

<pre>
   <code>
      console.log(`TILerator tool version: ${version}`);
   </code>
</pre>

Merging these two branches into main went quite smoothly with no conflicts, primarily due to these two features being implemented in different areas.

Overall, I have learned the concepts of parallel branches and merging. Creating separate branches is an effective method to testing out new features in an isolated environment without affecting the main branch.