golint-sl

Appearance

todotracker

About 215 words

Ensures TODO and FIXME comments have owners.

Category

Architecture

What It Checks

This analyzer detects TODO and FIXME comments without attribution.

A marker is the upper-case word TODO or FIXME at the start of a comment line, including the continuation lines of a block comment. Words that only contain the letters, such as Mastodon, lower-case prose, a marker in the middle of a sentence and identifiers such as context.TODO are left alone.

Why It Matters

Anonymous TODOs:

  • Have no accountability
  • Are often forgotten
  • Accumulate over time
  • Make triage difficult

Examples

Bad: Anonymous TODO

// TODO: fix this later
func Process() {
    // FIXME: handle errors properly
}

Good: Attributed TODO

// TODO(alice): fix this later - JIRA-1234
func Process() {
    // FIXME(bob): handle errors properly
}

Accepted Formats

// TODO(username): description
// TODO(username): description - TICKET-123
// FIXME(username): description

Why Attribution Matters

  1. Accountability: Someone is responsible
  2. Contact: Know who to ask about it
  3. Tracking: Link to issue trackers
  4. Cleanup: Easier to triage and prioritize

Configuration

# .golint-sl.yaml
analyzers:
  todotracker: true  # enabled by default

When to Disable

  • Personal projects
  • Early prototyping
  • Projects using external TODO tracking
analyzers:
  todotracker: false