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Release 0.1

The past few weeks I have been looking at the differences between declaring variables for JavaScript.

Var, Const, Let are the variable declarations that are widely used, each one having a specific purpose. New developers mostly use 'var,' as it is the first technique taught.

However, 'var' declarations is no longer widely used by JavaScript developers. The modern practice of variable declarations is with 'const' and 'let'.

Before starting anything, I had to first understand the difference between the three:
  • Const declarations means the values cannot be changed/reassigned. 
  • Let declarations should be used when declaring local variables in a block scope. 
  • Var declarations hold the weakest signal which can be used outside of a block, and can be reassigned.
For Release 0.1, we were asked to look into a library called 'filer.js.' The task was to go through one of the test files, and change the old-fashioned 'var' declarations to the modern 'const/let' declarations. The task was to fork the GitHub library and create a new branch to make changes to. After that, we were required to create a pull request to make the changes to the 'filer.js' master branch

My Issue: https://github.com/filerjs/filer/issues/728
My Pull-Request: https://github.com/filerjs/filer/pull/730

The file I explored was 'filer/tests/spec/fs.shell.spec.js.' The file contained only 'var' declarations, and needed to be updated to the modern format of 'const/let.' The first step I took was to fork the library to my own GitHub account. After that, I opened Terminal and pulled the repository to my local machine. I created a new branch in the new forked repository, and was ready to make changes. Through Visual Studio Code, I edited the 'fs.shell.spec' file and added it to the git files ready to be pushed. After pushing the files to the repository, I created a pull request to the original filer.js library.

Upon completing my own task, I went into all of the pull requests made by my peers. Most of my peers correctly changed the variable declarations, but I found one that had some issues.

Reviewed Pull-Request: https://github.com/filerjs/filer/pull/729

This pull request declared all of the variables with 'let' which according to the articles I read, was wrong. The variables should have all used 'const,' as the variables did not change values. Some examples of the code:


Upon finding these errors, I commented a message to let my peer know to change it.



Other peers have already been reviewed, and this issue was the only one left that had errors.



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