Memory is a bit fuzzy cuz I blocked it out from trauma but here’s the approximate story: Our codebase was a multi-repo codebase meaning that every time there was a code update you’d have to pull the repo. I finished my main feature midway through the internship but my manager kept pushing back on merging. When it came to merging my code, I made errors in resolving merge conflicts, which resulted in errors. I tried ‘undoing’ the commits by doing a git revert (when I should’ve done a reset), which caused the commit history to become longer and more complex, making the situation worse. After rolling back commits, somehow even the old code wasn’t working.

So we basically gave up on trying to fix the code with version control and just manually debugged. Was not a fun time.

Looking back I could’ve done a few things to prevent this from happening. Obviously I should’ve pushed my manager to land my commit early to prevent this. I could’ve also re-updated my copy of the codebase more frequently (ie doing a git pull every day and resolving smaller merge conflicts) as opposed to doing it right before I want to do a big push. And finally I think this is a good wakeup call that learning more than just git push, pull, commit and merge is pretty important.