Changing text through the GitHub UI

In general, e-mission UI changes are made by creating a fork, installing the devapp, testing the changes in the emulator, and and if using the emTripLog base app, submitting a pull request to the branch for your project.

But sometimes, you want to make some quick changes without that overhead. The most common use case is probably a deployer who hired a programmer to make a custom UI. After the contract is over, she realizes that she needs to make minor changes to the text - e.g.

  • to the consent, once the final IRB approval is in place,
  • to prompts or other visual elements, based on feedback from a pilot

This document outlines how she can make the changes herself directly online. easy as editing a google doc!

Safe changes

I would not recommend this for anything other than:

  • direct text substitutions (e.g. "foo" -> "bar")
  • adding non-visual tags (e.g. adding alt tags to images)

Anything else has the potential for unexpected breakage and should really be tested before deployment.

Steps for making changes

  1. Find the file to change
    • If your changes will be on master, you can search directly in github
    • If your changes will be on a branch other than master
    • clone the repo to your local computer 
      $ git clone https://github.com/e-mission/e-mission-phone.git
    • switch to the branch you want to change 
      $ git checkout --track origin/<your_branch>
    • search for the text using the standard tools for your computer (e.g. using grep, opening in an IDE and searching in the project...)
  2. Select your branch in the github UI branch selection github ui
  3. Navigate to the file(s) you found in step 1 navigate to file and edit
  4. Edit the file(s) directly and fill out the "Propose file change" message at the bottom so I know what you are doing. A message about write access is expected. "You’re editing a file in a project you don’t have write access to. Submitting a change to this file will write it to a new branch in your fork"
  5. Submit the pull request with the change
  6. See the change in your UI channel