In this blog we have seen many different processes that help us ensure that our software is a quality software. But performing all of those processes manually without the help of any tool would end up being an enormous task. Thankfully there are multiple tools that help us perform those processes and we will talk about them today.
Tools for Version Control
For version control there are many different tools, but I will mainly be talking about Git and Github, which is the most popular one and the most used in the industry.
Before starting to talk about Git, let’s dive deeper into what is Version Control. Version control is the management of the code development process. It’s a way to manage the changes to the source code over time. It records each change and allows you to revert back to previous states that were recorded. As you can see this is very useful when developing, since if you made a mistake or prefer the way it was before you can easily just revert the changes. Version control also allows teams to work on a same program at once, since they can be working on the source code and the version control tools allow you to upload the changes and pull the changes if needed, and if there is conflict between what one member of the team did and another, then the version control tools allows you to choose between the two versions or to create a new one.
Git
Git is a software tool that allows easy version control. It uses repositories as folders for the source code which can be divided into branch which can later be merged into a main one, that is the one deployed, while you can make experimental changes on other branches to later unite them with the main one or discard them.
One of the main advantages of Git is that since you can manage repositories locally even within a team, you can still have version control even if you don’t have a network connection at a time, and once you have it all the commits will be made after you have worked normally.
Another advantage is how since it’s so popular it’s really simple to implement and most people already know how to work with it, instead of other tools of version control. Also Git allows people to make pull requests, so you can kind of put changes on a waiting list until they are checked and if they are fine they merge into the main branch.
Tools for Testing
Selenium.- Selenium is one of the most popular tools for testing, which is a free open source automated testing framework. It’s mainly used to test web applications. It can use different languages like Java or C# to create Selenium Test Scripts which are ways to automate testing.
JUnit.- JUnit is another popular tool, it is a Java automation tool for unit tests mainly. It has been important for the evolution of TDD. JUnit allows to run tests continously and tells if they are succesful or not, also allowing to test multiple things at once. It’s a simple but effective tool which provides immediate feedback.
Tools for process administration
Trello. Trello is one of the most widely used in the industry, since it allows you to have a Kan Ban board for the development team, which is the basis for Agile Development, that way everyone is in the same page and can easily see in a visual way which tasks are immediate priority, which tasks are already done, who is working on which thing, etc. It’s a very useful tool that every software team should use.
Notion. Notion is a great tool that allows teams to have their own “wiki”, that way they can have the same notes, divide the information as needed, and have the resources at hand for everyone to use. It’s a way to have the information in a neat way about the software which is easy to access and modify.