[Ethereum] How to debug transaction from truffle test on development network

The origin of the issue is because you're trying to deploy the contract from the file migrations/1_initial_migration.js that is supposed to be used only for the deployment of Migration.sol.

To deploy your contracts, you need to create a file in migrations/2_deploy_contracts.js that contains the deployment part of TestCrowsale.sol

migrations/1_initial_migration.js

var Migrations = artifacts.require("./Migrations.sol");
module.exports = function(deployer) {
   deployer.deploy(Migrations);
};

migrations/2_deploy_contracts.js

var TestCrowdsale = artifacts.require("./TestCrowdsale.sol");

module.exports = function(deployer) {
   deployTestCrowdsale(deployer);
};

function deployTestCrowdsale(deployer) {

   const accounts = web3.eth.accounts;

   const startTime = latestTime();
   const endTime = startTime + duration.days(45);
   const rate = 2500;
   const goal = web3.toWei(250, 'ether');
   const cap = web3.toWei(4000, 'ether');
   const wallet = accounts[0];

   return deployer.deploy(TestCrowdsale, startTime, endTime, rate, wallet);

}

function latestTime() {
  return web3.eth.getBlock('latest').timestamp;
}

const duration = {
   seconds: function (val) { return val; },
   minutes: function (val) { return val * this.seconds(60); },
   hours: function (val) { return val * this.minutes(60); },
   days: function (val) { return val * this.hours(24); },
   weeks: function (val) { return val * this.days(7); },
   years: function (val) { return val * this.days(365); },
};

I tried on my side and the deployment go through :

Compiling ./contracts/Migrations.sol...
Writing artifacts to ./build/contracts

Using network 'development'.

Running migration: 1_initial_migration.js
  Deploying Migrations...
  ... 0x46dd08a7e00419adc52c3b9b048f89812dd960463b02125a93eb7e43eb4ca64f
  Migrations: 0x4a5a1448d37aeaaae79deed7e0d3f81ebc52db87
Saving successful migration to network...
  ... 0x573964afa1f79deca003871bd793026f7c932d9c46b8be055184e10790a63147
Saving artifacts...
Running migration: 2_deploy_contracts.js
  Deploying TestCrowdsale...
  ... 0xd251d1b3b92facb64e38ce3e04907197e9b7b9e7fefdf083da1b43c08f1b9bb1
  TestCrowdsale: 0xd817d9295491556f00a45c8092e42c10df271865
Saving successful migration to network...
  ... 0x83a2ba140f54003fc0f146ff2d8b8e2f6d9013122d59d94a39a74d4a9c8df92e
Saving artifacts..

I pushed the code here for more details: https://github.com/gjeanmart/stackexchange/tree/master/36690-error-encountered-bailing-network-state-unknown-review-successful-transaction

To answer and close my own question for anyone coming up on it in the future:

1. The code going "boom" was inside my Smart Contract, as evident by the VM exception error and the revert thing. I got into the habit of temporarily adding error logging to my require() statements inside solidity, so I managed to track where it was breaking. So, do use require(foo == true, "foo shouldn't be false!"); to try and track things.
2. My problem was being too tired to read the entire truffle+ganache documentation. Inside truffle tests, calls do not make persistent changes to the blockchain (don't ask me how, but they seem to be dry-runs of a transaction), so my first test was not leaving anything behind. To make changes persist between tests, I actually needed to send a proper Transaction to my ganache blockchain.

That made my changes persist from test 1 to test 2, and I managed to get passing tests.
What I did was:

• Dry run my tests with call() and test returned results (because Transactions don't actually return results, they return a tx id and you gotta debug that manually)
• If everything went well with the call, I make a proper transaction by invoking the method directly (in my case, I go from meta.initPassport.call("John Doe"); to meta.initPassport("John Doe", {from: accounts[0]}); - simple, right? I guess not. More info on that special second parameter (on my contract, initPassport() only takes 1 parameter, but we pass 2 on the transaction inside test.js) can be found here: https://www.trufflesuite.com/docs/truffle/getting-started/interacting-with-your-contracts#making-a-transaction
• My transaction leaves persistent changes to my deployed (migrated) contract, so I move on with test 2, and do calls or transactions there as I please. But at least on test 2 I can now test on previous conditions and results!