Refactoring my Repository-Context-Packager code

My Repository-Context-Packager tool packages Git repository contents into a single text file for sharing with Large Language Models (LLMs). If you're not familiar, it's a CLI app that analyzes directories, collects Git information, builds file trees, and outputs everything neatly. Here is my repository.

Refactoring is not about adding new features; it's about improving the code's structure without changing its behavior. I focused on making the code easier to read, maintain, and test. Let's dive into what I did, step by step, and how Git helped me manage the process.

What did you focus on in your improvements?

My original files, index.js and utils.js, which made them hard to reuse for future implementations. I focused on breaking them into smaller, more focused units to improve my code’s modularity.

How did you fix your code so it would be better in each step?

I followed a structured approach, committing each change separately to maintain a clear history.
The utils.js file was bloated with Git, file system, and configuration functions, so I extracted them into dedicated modules to improve structure and readability.

• Created git-utils.js for Git operations like getGitInfo and getRecentlyModifiedFiles.
• Created fs-utils.js for system operations like buildTree, traverseDir, and readFileContents.
• Renamed utils.js to config-utils.js since it contained logic for handling TOML configs.
• Updated cli.js to import correctly from the new modules.

How did your interactive rebase go?

It went smoothly. I first practiced using the lab example before performing the rebase on this project.

Did you find any bugs in your code while you did this?

No, I did not find any bugs during the refactoring process.

Did you break your program while changing things?

No, I did not. Before pushing everything to the main branch, I ran my code to make sure nothing was broken during the refactoring. The output remained identical.

How did it go using Git to change your project's history?

It went well. I first created a refactoring branch for isolation, committed changes separately for clarity, and then used an interactive rebase to squash all commits into one. Here is the refactoring commit.

Refactoring was much needed as it made my code more modular and maintainable for future work.