Rewriting the Codebase: repo-contextr’s Week 6 Refactor Journey

#devjournal #opensource #softwareengineering

This week was the cleanup week for repo-contextr!

After devoting the first five weeks solely to feature development, I realized we had reached the point where code quality and maintainability needed attention. Week 6 was therefore dedicated entirely to refactoring and restructuring the project.

Background: The Early Design

At the beginning of the project, I followed a straightforward design pattern, separating the functionality into two main modules: commands and utils. The commands module was meant to contain the main features and logic of the tool, while the utils module would host supporting functions to help those features run efficiently. However, as development progressed, utils started to grow beyond its intended purpose. It became a large collection of loosely related functions — many of which were actually part of the tool’s core logic. Over time, this blurred the boundary between modules, and the design pattern I had initially set out to follow began to fade away. This was not only making the code difficult to navigate but also making it harder to onboard new contributors. It became clear that before adding any new features, the internal structure had to be cleaned up.

The Previous Code Structure

src/contextr/               # Main package
├── __init__.py
├── cli.py                  # CLI argument parsing
├── main.py                 # Application entry point
│
├── commands/               # Command implementations
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── package.py          # Main command(328 lines - MONOLITHIC)
│
└── utils/                  # "Utils" anti-pattern package
    ├── __init__.py
    └── helpers.py          # ALL functionality (376 lines)

The Refactor Plan

To improve the maintainability and clarity of the codebase, I spent some time exploring well-structured open-source Python projects. A common theme I noticed was that each core functionality was isolated in its own dedicated module, with clear boundaries between responsibilities. Inspired by this, I decided to completely remove the utils module and distribute its contents into purpose-specific packages. Before beginning, I created a new Git branch named refactor/improve-codebase to ensure all the refactor work remained isolated from the main branch until it was stable. This allowed me to make incremental changes, test them thoroughly, and later merge the work in a clean, single commit.

Implementation Details

The professor had also pointed out during evaluation that having a utils module at the forefront was a design weakness in any serious project. After reviewing it, I realized that everything inside utils could be reorganized into focused modules such as discovery, processing, git, output, and config. Additionally, the logic responsible for generating reports could be encapsulated into a dedicated class, RepositoryReportFormatter, improving testability and readability. This new modular approach helped separate concerns and made the code easier to extend and maintain.

Throughout the process, I maintained a clean and disciplined Git workflow. I committed the changes in three logical stages and later used interactive rebase to squash them into a single, well-documented commit. This ensured that the main branch retained a clean and readable history. Once everything was reviewed and verified, I merged it into the main branch. You can see the commit here: 1f9aff6. This workflow made the refactoring process organized, reversible, and transparent — qualities that are essential when collaborating on open-source projects.

The New Structure After Refactor

src/contextr/
├── cli.py                    # CLI interface (argparse)
├── main.py                   # Entry point
│
├── commands/                 # Command implementations
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── package.py            # Main orchestration (83 lines)
│
├── config/                   # Configuration management
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py           # Application constants
│   ├── toml_loader.py        # TOML configuration loading
│   └── languages.py          # Language/syntax mappings
│
├── discovery/                # File & directory discovery
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── file_discovery.py     # File finding, filtering, path validation
│
├── processing/               # File content processing
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── file_reader.py        # Content reading, binary detection
│
├── git/                      # Git repository operations
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── git_operations.py     # Git info, recent files, root detection
│
├── formatters/               # Output formatting
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── report_formatter.py   # Report generation (230 lines)
│
├── statistics/               # File analysis & metrics
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── file_stats.py         # Statistics calculation (115 lines)
│
└── output/                   # Display formatting
    ├── __init__.py
    └── tree_formatter.py     # Tree structure generation

Version Control Workflow

This refactor week taught me the importance of writing code for humans first, and machines second. Design patterns that seem fine during early prototyping may not scale as a project matures. Keeping code modular, organized, and easy to understand is what makes a project sustainable in the long term. I also learned that avoiding catch-all directories like utils encourages meaningful boundaries and accountability within the codebase. Refactoring also made me appreciate Git’s advanced capabilities. Using branches for isolation, rebasing for history cleanup, and well-scoped commits for traceability all contribute to a cleaner development lifecycle. Most importantly, I learned that restructuring a codebase is not just about rearranging files, it’s about improving readability, maintainability, and paving the way for future contributors.

You can check out the project on GitHub here:

👉 repo-contextr on GitHub