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Issues bugtrackers get lost, code stay. I prefer to see a TODO and have a glimpse of what was going on in the dev mind (or even my own mind, 6 months ago) rathe

Issues bugtrackers get lost, code stay. I prefer to see a TODO and have a glimpse of what was going on in the dev mind (or even my own mind, 6 months ago) rather than "hide this information for the sake of cleanliness." Just the same way, to a large extend, documentation should be in the code, not in a wiki.

geofft 7y ago
Not for the sake of cleanliness - for the sake of storing the information in a useful format. If you want the bugtracker or documentation to be checked into the same source repository, that seems entirely reasonable to me. I don't know good tools beyond text files for doing this for bugtracking (although I think Fossil does this, kind of, and I'm sad that Simple Defects never took off), though if your work is uncomplicated enough to go into code comments, it's definitely uncomplicated enough to go into a separate todo file, as I mentioned. It's very straightforward to do this for documentation. Probably the right thing is to use your existing patch-contribution workflow for this, but make it lighter-weight for docs (reduced or nonexistent code review), but you can also hook up your docs to something like Ikiwiki if you prefer: being in a wiki and being in the source control repo aren't at odds with each other. And for seeing what was in the dev's mind six months ago - use git log and git blame for that. Even TODOs get refactored away, or moved around enough that they no longer make sense. Good commit messages will show you the whole change that was being made, in context, and what the programmer was thinking when making that change.
- alacombe 7y ago
  Most devs I've been working with don't even bother with a full sentence in their commit log. At this point, we're discussing between what "should be done" in a perfect world, and what's actually been done when you switch between a couple of project in a day, moving from "implementing feature Y" back to "putting down some random fire", back to "implementing feature X" within a day in an undermanned team. Sometime, a hack will get you back running in prod, and a "TODO" will be there next time you actually have time to address the underlying issue.
  - geofft 7y ago
    Oh yeah, a TODO is way better than nothing, no disagreement there. If you have a code review step, "please move this comment from the code to the commit message / the bugtracker / whatever" seems like a reasonable comment. If you don't or you're bypassing it or nobody does good code reviews, sure, leave the TODO in. I am indeed talking about the ideal world and whether we think TODO comments are a good idea in the abstract.

geofft 7y ago

Not for the sake of cleanliness - for the sake of storing the information in a useful format. If you want the bugtracker or documentation to be checked into the same source repository, that seems entirely reasonable to me. I don't know good tools beyond text files for doing this for bugtracking (although I think Fossil does this, kind of, and I'm sad that Simple Defects never took off), though if your work is uncomplicated enough to go into code comments, it's definitely uncomplicated enough to go into a separate todo file, as I mentioned. It's very straightforward to do this for documentation. Probably the right thing is to use your existing patch-contribution workflow for this, but make it lighter-weight for docs (reduced or nonexistent code review), but you can also hook up your docs to something like Ikiwiki if you prefer: being in a wiki and being in the source control repo aren't at odds with each other. And for seeing what was in the dev's mind six months ago - use git log and git blame for that. Even TODOs get refactored away, or moved around enough that they no longer make sense. Good commit messages will show you the whole change that was being made, in context, and what the programmer was thinking when making that change.

alacombe 7y ago
Most devs I've been working with don't even bother with a full sentence in their commit log. At this point, we're discussing between what "should be done" in a perfect world, and what's actually been done when you switch between a couple of project in a day, moving from "implementing feature Y" back to "putting down some random fire", back to "implementing feature X" within a day in an undermanned team. Sometime, a hack will get you back running in prod, and a "TODO" will be there next time you actually have time to address the underlying issue.
- geofft 7y ago
  Oh yeah, a TODO is way better than nothing, no disagreement there. If you have a code review step, "please move this comment from the code to the commit message / the bugtracker / whatever" seems like a reasonable comment. If you don't or you're bypassing it or nobody does good code reviews, sure, leave the TODO in. I am indeed talking about the ideal world and whether we think TODO comments are a good idea in the abstract.