Auto-expiring TODO notes in Ruby

Auto-expiring TODO notes in Ruby(github.com)

60 points by andywaite 12 years ago | 40 comments

tekacs 12 years ago |

Might it not make sense to invert the parity of the environment variable and require its being set for do_by to be used? I imagine most would rather set an environment variable in their dev environment than ensure it gets set in every possible production instance... :/

As much as 'turning off asserts' is the classical style, that's more to do with the design of older instrumentation than the sanity of it.

andywaite 12 years ago | |

Good suggestion! I have noted it: https://github.com/andyw8/do_by/issues/2

andywaite 12 years ago | | |

And it's now implemented thanks to joallard.

skrebbel 12 years ago |

Lovely language / solution mismatch.

Any compiled language would fit this much better - fail at compile time. Or in interpreted-o-world, at least do it at test time.

I guess it's just lovely when deployed, working, test-passing software suddenly starts failing on a server (all servers at once, globally), because someone added a TODO a few weeks ago.

jerf 12 years ago | |

From the README:

"In your production environment, set DISABLE_DO_BY=1 to disable checks."

theforgottenone 12 years ago | | |

Given that we are talking about lazy/overworked on top of lazy/overworked here, why any confidence that this will be done 100% of the time?

Putting time bombs in your code, regardless of a global configuration switch, is just asking for trouble.

froh42 12 years ago |

Don't do that.

Some years ago I had the same idea and realized something like that with the C-Preprocessor in a C++-Codebase.

When did my Todo's expire? AFTER testing, just before a new release. With my idea of exipiring Todos I created a major pain in the butt for the team.

It would be different if some other "sort of" alarm would be raised when TODOs proliferate, but a failure in the code is not a good solution. (i.e. hook a todo checker into your contious build system, let the nightly build raise hell when there are too many todos - but do not fail the production code.)

iirving 12 years ago |

So there may not be much awareness so this, but <strike>Ruby</strike> Rails (as noted below, the annotations or part of rails/rake) has this feature that you can add special annotations # TODO # FIXME # OPTIMIZE comments to you code, and "$ rake notes" to list them. it also allows you to have a custom annotations comments : For a full description, see : http://rubyquicktips.com/post/385665023/fixme-todo-and-optim...

Better to make a # DOBY annotation and modify the rake task to shame if the date passed. You could also add this metadata to the existing annotations. If you what to automate the shaming, write a guard gem to watch for these annotations.

andywaite 12 years ago | |

This is a Rails feature, not a Ruby feature. But building something based on this could be useful.

iirving 12 years ago | | |

Thanks Andy, you are correct! The annotations are part of Rails / Rake.

kyberias 12 years ago |

Silly.

I fail to understand how the developer getting the surprising out-of-context (with regard to what the developer is currently doing) build failure due to time-bomb-TODO-comments suddenly is expected to experience an energy burst and fix the issue right then and there. After all, the developer didn't fix the issue when the comment was written!

I think this just leads the developer to either a) delete the comment or b) increase the due date.

sctb 12 years ago | |

After reading the title, I actually expected the code would do the opposite: remove the TODO because nobody found it to be the right time to address it over the specified period and they probably never will.

andywaite 12 years ago | | |

Developers often add TODOs for tasks that seem essential at the time, but later become redundant.

There is also the use case of when you can't do something because you're dependent on something else, for example you might have a workaround due to a issue in one of your dependencies. Once that's resolves, you can update to the newer version of that library, and remove your workaround.

peteretep 12 years ago |

Better to make it a NOOP and have an automated test that scans for it. Too much chance of exercising it in production otherwise.

dtech 12 years ago |

Wouldn't this be much more suitable to do in an IDE or compiler? Raising exceptions during runtime seems the wrong approach to me. I wouldn't be suprised if this is possible and used in e.g. Mylyn.

Another idea would be to automatically create a task/bug/issue for every TODO created (which closes when the TODO is removed)

theforgottenone 12 years ago | |

or an IDE that just scans the code files, picks out the lines of comments containing "TODO" and put them in a list in the gui, so you see it all the time.

Or generate a compile warning instead of a comment. Then it will annoy you constantly, with no risk to production.

sootzoo 12 years ago | | |

I think he makes the case (and I agree) that if you create a substantial number of TODOs and they manifest as IDE/compile-time warnings, they eventually become noise which you learn to ignore instead of fix.

grrowl 12 years ago |

I'd see this with more value as a post-commit git hook. After a certain amount of time (or date specified) it would warn you that TODOs are about to expire, and either remove them or update the date. That way it can be project-wide and doesn't require execution.

e28eta 12 years ago |

I like it. It reminds me of a concept [1] I saw presented at Fluent Conf this year, called Sunset Tests. The idea is that when you write code which shouldn't be a permanent addition to the code base (for example, a poly fill for IE 7, or an A/B test), write a test that checks for the existence of that code and fails if it's still there past a certain date.

I wonder if the TODO method could dynamically generate a test case that does the same.

[1] Everything is a Polyfill: Automate Deleting Code for Front End Performance - Rachel Myers and Emily Nakashima

http://www.slideshare.net/eanakashima/everything-is-a-polyfi...

mkal_tsr 12 years ago |

Horrible implementation approach. Mixing runtime exceptions with project management that you're not guaranteed to hit while testing? lol.

A pre-commit hook is the way to go,

* Post-commit: You'll always catch the exception, but you'll be able to commit expired TODOs

* Pre-commit: you'll have to explicitly change the expired TODOs either by removing them (irrelevant TODO, todo became todone through a refactor, etc.), or discussing a better end-date ... but either way, you're forced to address the expired TODO and not run the risk of committing expired TODOs nor not taking a test path that would miss the expired TODO exception

ansimionescu 12 years ago |

I started doing something much simpler: When working on a project I just create .todo files anywhere it makes sense. This way I can view, edit, add, and remove them very easily with simple shell commands.

I just enjoy the simplicity of `echo 'remember to test the milk' >> foo/.todo`.

Argorak 12 years ago | |

I like your example. Especially because milk expires ;).

TazeTSchnitzel 12 years ago |

Why a function? I hoped it would just parse comments.

michaelmior 12 years ago | |

Likewise. I think I'd rather have this as part of the build process. This would also make it easier to have a tool which works across languages.

andywaite 12 years ago | |

I think that's a good idea. Perhaps based on a standard format such as '# TODO 2014-01-01 Fix me' ?

Ruud-v-A 12 years ago | | |

Why put the date in the comment itself? Just ask source control when the line was introduced, and set a max age.

y14 12 years ago |

This is excellent. I always fail to keep track on my TODOS in files. Very useful.

watwut 12 years ago | |

My TODO comments show up in nice view in GUI I use (Eclipse). I'm sure other GUIs have similar views somewhere. I'm also sure that plugin to turn old ones into syntax errors could be done in a day or two. That sound like much safer approach then runtime exception.

aaronem 12 years ago | | |

A day or two, really? That seems like an awfully long time requirement for what should be a simple change.

skrebbel 12 years ago | |

Use a decent editor.

middus 12 years ago | | |

Alternatively, you could continue using your editor of choice for editing and use grep to identify TODOs in your code.