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Testing Changes

When a collaborator adds you to a Pull Request as a reviewer, you can use these steps to manually test their changes.

This step is a great opportunity to:

  • Verify the PR includes all the necessary files for this change to work, and
  • Identify any additional documentation required to understand this change

Pull and Test Changes

If you have not already done so, Clone the remote github repository to your computer.

  1. Open a Terminal (in Positron, RStudio, or the Git-Bash terminal)
  2. Navigate to the project directory, if needed
  3. If you've made any local uncommitted changes, commit them or run git stash
  4. Run git switch main
  5. Run git pull
  6. Run git switch [prefix]/[branch-name] to switch to their changes
  7. Test their changes
  8. (Optionally) Adjust code, commit changes, and push
  9. If you stashed any changes, switch back to your feature branch and run git stash pop
  1. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P)
  2. Enter "Git: Pull From..."
  3. Search for "origin/main" and select
  4. Open the Command Palette again
  5. Enter "Git: Checkout to..."
  6. Select your team member's branch
  7. Test their changes
  8. (Optionally) Adjust code, commit changes, and push
  1. Click on the Git tab in the upper right pane in RStudio
  2. Click the dropdown next to 'New Branch' and ensure it says main
  3. Click on the Pull button
  4. Close the status pop-up
  5. Using the drop down, switch to their branch
  6. Test their changes
  7. (Optionally) Adjust code, commit changes, and push

See Committing changes for how to stage files, commit them, and push to the remote.

Email data@hakai.org to learn more about automating testing.