Debugging and Exploration

This week again felt like I didn't do much.

I am so sick of writing this - so to resolve this whole ordeal, my goal by the end of this blog is to outline a better measurement of my contribution to Telescope.

Expo-CLI

In retrospect, this week I spent more than enough time trying to explore this issue that I created. I found it extremely difficult to get my virtual devices working on Android Studio. I was actually extremely confused because I have taken a course in Android Development, where we used Android Studio, and I was able to successfully run the apps I created in the virtual devices. However, I thought Expo was causing a problem between the sym link it creates to launch the app in the desired virtual device. After a lot of debugging, I noticed it had something to do with the adb.exe file in the Android directory on my PC.

I did some more exploration.

I did all the updates.

I uninstalled Android Studio twice.

I deleted the virtual devices on my PC.

No luck.

What I recalled was that for our Android Development class, there were environment variables that I needed to set. I re-read the documentation for expo-cli and Android Studios, and both discussed this for Linux and MacOS users, but not for Windows. I decided that I would explore this for Windows. I found documentation for this, and went into my environment variables. To my surprise, the key was missing. I had never erased it, but somehow must have been removed. I added the key back in, and went back to the Telescope Repo to try and launch it one more time. To my surprise, it worked! I was so relieved because I have wanted to get into some of the React Native work since we started it, but I could not launch the darn thing! I was starting to become frustrated because I was losing an opportunity to try something new, with something that was out of my hands. I wrote a PR to update our documentation for Windows users to note that they may need to set the environment variables with images, in hopes of having less frustrated contributors (something I mentioned in a blog long long long time ago).

After this I went to the issue to ship react native app to Android. I made an account, but I got side tracked. I was happy to read and understand how we will be shipping this though, and hope to potential create the automated releases from GitHub Actions as I read about.

Search Bar

This search bar... it's so close, but every time I finally get it launched and working... I get frustrated and tired.

This week I did a rebase for the branch. This rebase was for 10 separate commits. I am not a fan or rebasing and having conflicts. This means I am a new fan of continuously updating my branches with the latest code in master.

After my rebase, I was able to run it, and it seems I am very close. I was unable to get the port for the queries working, so once I solve that, I will be able to get the inputs working. I think I might need to make a new issue to create another input for the general search on the search page. This will search the term inside the input in all the text fields.

Expectations

So as I mentioned, it's becoming really difficult for me to stay motivated as each week I am feeling that I am not getting much done. I believe the most realistic expectation is to take an Agile approach. I'm going to take a guess how long each issue will take. From there I will dedicate about 6 hours a week for these issues. As we discussed in the beginning of the semester, the train will leave the station, and there will be another train. I think if I follow my guidelines for the time I dedicate, I will not leave each week feeling like I got nothing done - because even though I didn't make a 4 file change PR, I spent time working and solving issues.

This being said, I want to spend another 2 hours on Search bar and see where I land. I refuse to write another blog about this issue, unless its the final one.