Tips for refactoring?

Question

Our team is trying to refactor a bunch of code in our project. Since it represents a lot of work, we were debating if we should do all the work on a same laptop to avoid conflicts or if we split the work and do it on different laptops and then merge everything. Has any team ever done that? Did you have a lot of conflicts to resolve?

Answer 1

For us doing it on one computer was easier to manage. Also while the refactoring was being sorted out we did not modify any other part of the code to avoid unnecessary conflicts later. Everyone pulled the changes before moving forward with other changes.

Answer 2

I would recommend, which is what out group did, is looking for methods used in you're classes that are repeated. With this you can create a new class which contains these methods to be used in the program. It is easiest to do this on one computer with the team since it does not create git issues with pushing and pulling and the team is aware of the changes made if the methods need to be used.

Answer 3

I think the best way to go about it would be to perform all the refactoring on a single computer if there is a lot that has to be done since merging would take a huge amount of time, or people could work on classes that are interrelated to one another so splitting work could happen.