snitch

Snitch

A simple tool that collects TODOs in the source code and reports them as GitHub issues.

How it works

1. Snitch finds an unreported TODO,
2. Reports it to the GitHub as an issue,
3. Assigns the Issue number to the TODO marking it a reported,
4. Commits the reported TODO to the git repo,
5. Repeats the process until all of the unreported TODOs are reported.

After that you are supposed to push the new reported TODOs yourself.

TODO Format

Unreported TODO

Example

// TODO: rewrite this in Rust

Parsing

Regular expression: ^(.*)TODO(O*): (.*)$ Play

Capture Groups:

• Group 1: Prefix. Used only to precisly recover the text of the line where the TODO is originally located.
• Group 2: Urgency Suffix. Used to indicate the urgency of the TODO. The higher the amount of O-s, the more urgent the TODO is. (See Urgency for more info)
• Group 3: Suffix. Used as the title of the issue.

Reported TODO

Example

// TODO(#42): rewrite this in Rust

Parsing

Regular expression: ^(.*)TODO(O*)\((.*)\): (.*)$ Play

Capture Groups:

• Group 1: Prefix. Used only to precisly recover the text of the line where the TODO is originally located.
• Group 2: Urgency Suffix. Used to indicate the urgency of the TODO. The higher the amount of O-s, the more urgent the TODO is. (See Urgency for more info)
• Group 3: ID. The number of the Issue.
• Group 4: Suffix. Used as the title of the issue.

TODO Body

Example

// TODO: rewrite this in Rust
//   I honestly think Rust is going to be around forever,
//   I really do. I think this is like, this is the formation
//   of Ancient Greek.
//   © https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/ahmnwa/i_honestly_think_rust_is_going_to_be_around/

Parsing

• Snitch remembers the TODO's prefix.
• Snitch parses all of the consecutive lines with the same prefix as the body.
• The body is reported as the Issue Description.

Urgency

The urgency system was stolen from fixmee Emacs extension. The urgency of TODOs is indicated by repetitions of the final character of the keyword. For example, one might write TODOOOOOOOOO for an important issue. The list subcommand will sort the TODOs in the descending order by their urgency.

Remote specification

By default Snitch will automatically reference the origin remote as the defacto standard for most projects.

However, you can specify which remote Snitch uses on a per repo basis.

.snitch.yaml

Remotes are defined in .snitch.yaml under remote.

Example

title:
  transforms:
    - match: (.*) \*/
      replace: $1
    - match: (.*) \*\}
      replace: $1
keywords:
  - FIXME
remote: <remote>

Commandline

Remotes can be dynamically specified when Snitch is called.

This will overide a previously defined remote in .snitch.yaml

Example

$ ./snitch report --remote <remote>

Installation

$ go get github.com/tsoding/snitch

Credentials

GitHub Credentials

Snitch obtains GitHub credentials from two places: (default) environment variable or file.

Environment Variable

export GITHUB_PERSONAL_TOKEN = <personal-token> which can be added to .bashrc

File

Config file can be stored in one of the following directories:

• $HOME/.config/snitch/github.ini
• $HOME/.snitch/github.ini

Format:

[github]
personal_token = <personal-token>

Checkout GitHub Help on how to get the Personal Access Token.

Make sure to enable full access to private repos. For some reason it's required to post issues.

GitLab Credentials

GitLab credentials configuration is similar to GitHub with an exception that you also have to provide the host of the GitLab instance.

Environment Variable

export GITLAB_PERSONAL_TOKEN = <personal-token> which can be added to .bashrc.

Each of the credentials are to be separated by , and in format: <host>:<personal-token>. Credentials without host part, e.g. <personal-token> are interpreted as gitlab.com tokens to maintain backward compatibility and invalid tokens are ignored (prints an error message).

File

Config file can be stored in one of the following directories:

• $HOME/.config/snitch/gitlab.ini
• $HOME/.snitch/gitlab.ini

Format:

[gitlab.com]
personal_token = <personal-token>

[gitlab.local]
personal_token = <personal-token>

Checkout GitLab Help on how to get the Personal Access Token. Make sure to enable api scope for the token.

Usage

For usage help just run snitch without any arguments:

$ ./snitch

.snitch.yaml

Custom keywords

You don't have to use TODO as the keyword of a todo you want to "snitch up". The keyword is customizable through .snitch.yaml config:

keywords:
  - TODO
  - FIXME
  - XXX
  - "@todo"

Issue Title Transformation

You can apply project local issue title transformations. Create .snitch.yaml file in the root of the project with the following content:

title:
  transforms:
    - match: (.*) \*/
      replace: $1

This feature is very useful for removing garbage from the Issue Titles. Like */ at the end of C comments.

Development

$ export GOPATH=$PWD
$ go get .
$ go build .

Run tests

$ go test ./...

For a more detailed output:

$ go test -v -cover ./...

Support

You can support my work via

• Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/subs/tsoding
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tsoding