DEV Community

Colin Soleim
Colin Soleim

Posted on • Updated on

 

6 Steps to Take When Inheriting Legacy Rails Apps

Intro

I started a new job back in June and my first project was taking over and making updates to a big legacy Rails app. Taking the project over was pretty much a worst-case scenario because the project had no tests and nobody who had built the website was still contactable.

Luckily I've been working with Rails for 6 years, and most of the decisions on this project ended up being the Rails standard, so I was able to setup the project, add some tests, and figure out deployments to staging/production.

Along the way I kept notes of my process, and wrote this blog post which gives the 6 steps I take when starting a project like this.

https://nextlinklabs.com/insights/six-tips-for-inheriting-a-legacy-rails-app

I'd love to hear any feedback on the blog post! Also, have any of you had a situation like this where you had to take over an existing project after the original developers have disappeared?

Top comments (3)

Collapse
 
cwraytech profile image
Christopher Wray

I think the post on your website is great!

In the future, I would recommend writing the whole post here on DEV as well. I like to bookmark posts to read them later, and you can add a sentence at the top stating that you originally published your post on your website, for SEO.

I do this on my post, and after a couple weeks, google will rank my website’s post in place of the post on DEV.

Collapse
 
colinsoleim profile image
Colin Soleim

Thanks for the recommendation, it's a great idea and I'll definitely do that with my future posts!

Collapse
 
cwraytech profile image
Christopher Wray

Sweet! I really enjoyed that post, and super helpful to see what you do with legacy code like that.

12 Rarely Used Javascript APIs You Need

Practical examples of some unique Javascript APIs that beautifully demonstrate a practical use-case.