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Propagate variables name changes in the entire project

Feature Request

We currently have a situation where we’d like to improve the naming scheme of a lot of our variables, hovewer doing so would be a titanic amount of manual work: finding the precise steps and tests where each variable is used.

A feature that I would find extremely useful would be something like this:

  1. I go to Variables section

  2. I open an existing variable

  3. I rename the variable

  4. I click the “Save button”

  5. I get a prompt giving me the option to update (or not) the variable name in all the tests where the variable is used

Posted by Marius COJOCARIU ·
4 comments

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Comments4

  • Paweł Bylina

    Team•

    Mar 14, 2025

    I think that when we finally release a feature to modify tests in text format this would be much, much easier to do.

    • Marius COJOCARIU

      •

      Mar 14, 2025

      I agree, but not completely. Much much easier would be debatable I think. :)

      Modifying a test in text format would make things easier indeed, in the sense that I could do Ctrl+F, find the old variable matches, and use replace all entries with the new variable name.

      But that wouldn’t solve the time consuming part of finding out which of the hundreds of tests are using that variable I want to rename? Also, I would still need to do it on a test by test basis which would be time consuming. In a code editor, changing a variable usually shows you a warning tooltip like “this is used in 20 other functions, want to update the entries there as well?”. The steps I included in the description would sort of emulate that flow. ^^

      And having the feature directly in BugBug would:

      • Offer the feature in bulk since your system would do the work behind the scenes and update all the steps that contain the old variable

      • Would be user friendly since it’s done directly from the user interface (one of the strongest points of BugBug, no IDEs, no compilers etc)

      • Would be optional if indeed a prompt is shown to the user to propagate or not the variable name change in the entire project.

      • Marius COJOCARIU

        •

        Mar 14, 2025

        Unless the feature allows to download the entire project in a text format, all variables and all the test repository, which I don’t know if it’s feasible, the exported file would be a few hundred MBs in size, and then uploading it back as well would be quite intensive.

      • Paweł Bylina

        Team•

        Mar 15, 2025

        Thanks for your opinion. I agree that this feature should be available through the UI.