todos.md

Todos

Linting is a fundamental tool to help ensure the quality of a codebase. Ensuring there are as few linting errors as possible (ideally 0), is a useful measure of a baseline of code hygiene.

It's common to leverage linting not only for syntax adherence, but also to direct developers to employ standardized patterns. As such, it's a fairly routine activity to introduce new lint rules into a codebase. This introduction, while necessary, can cause unintended friction, such as:

• new lint errors being introduced where they previously didn't exist
• causing unintended delays to shipping new fixes and features
• an "all or nothing" approach, where new rules require fixing before rollout

Having the ability to identify violations as todos allows for this incremental roll out, while providing tools that allow maintainers to view the full list of todo violations.

Usage

todos are stored in a .lint-todo file that should be checked in with other source code. Each error generates a unique line, allowing for multiple errors within a single file to be resolved individually with minimal conflicts.

To convert errors to todos, you can use the --update-todo option. This will convert all active errors to todos, hiding them from the linting output.

ember-template-lint . --update-todo

If you want to see todos as part of ember-template-lint's output, you can include them

ember-template-lint . --include-todo

If an error is fixed manually, ember-template-lint will let you know that there's a stale todo file. You'll see this error:

error  Todo violation passes no-vague-rules rule. Please run `npx ember-template-lint /path/to/file.hbs --clean-todo` to remove this todo from the todo list.

You can fix this error/remove the stale todo file by running --clean-todo

ember-template-lint . --clean-todo

Compacting the .lint-todo file

The .lint-todo file is a simple text file that contains a list of all the todo violations. This file can be quite large, especially if you have a lot of todo violations. To reduce the size of this file, you can compact it by running --compact-todo.

ember-template-lint . --compact-todo

Resolving .lint-todo file conflicts

The .lint-todo file can contain merge conflicts if multiple people perform todo operations on separate branches, and ultimately merge the resulting changes. To resolve this, you can run ember-template-lint . again, and it will automatically resolve the conflicts.

Configuring Due Dates

todos can be created with optional due dates. These due dates allow for todos to, over a period of time, 'decay' the severity to a warning and/or error after a certain date. This helps ensure that todos are created but not forgotten, and can allow for better managing incremental roll-outs of large-scale or slow-to-fix rules.

Due dates can be configured in multiple ways, but all specify integers for warn and error to signify the number of days from the todo created date to decay the severity.

💡 Both warn and error are optional. The value for warn should be lower than the value of error.

1. Via package.json

   {
     "lintTodo": {
       "ember-template-lint": {
         "daysToDecay": {
           "warn": 5,
           "error": 10
         }
       }
     }
   }

2. Via .lint-todorc.js

   module.exports = {
     'ember-template-lint': {
       daysToDecay: {
         warn: 5,
         error: 10,
       },
     },
   };

3. Via environment variables

   TODO_DAYS_TO_WARN="5" TODO_DAYS_TO_ERROR="10" ember-template-lint . --update-todo

4. Via command line options

   ember-template-lint . --update-todo --todo-days-to-warn=5 --todo-days-to-error=10

In order of precedence:

• command line options override both environment variables and package.json configuration values
• environment variables override package.json/.lint-todorc.js configuration values

If no values are provided in one of the options that have higher precedence, the value from the next level of precedence will act as the default. For example, if you've specified the following values in the package.json configuration...

{
  "lintTodo": {
    "ember-template-lint": {
      "daysToDecay": {
        "warn": 5,
        "error": 10
      }
    }
  }
}

...and you supply the following command line arguments:

ember-template-lint . --update-todo --todo-days-to-warn=2

...the todos will be created with a warn date 2 days from the created date, and an error date 10 days from the created date.

Configuring Due Dates for Individual Rules

Due dates can be configured on a per-rule basis with the daysToDecayByRule option. See examples below.

1. Via package.json

   {
     "lintTodo": {
       "ember-template-lint": {
         "daysToDecay": {
           "warn": 5,
           "error": 10
         },
         "daysToDecayByRule": {
           "no-implicit-this": {
             "warn": 10,
             "error": 20
           }
         }
       }
     }
   }

2. Via .lint-todorc.js

   module.exports = {
     'ember-template-lint': {
       daysToDecay: {
         warn: 5,
         error: 10,
       },
       daysToDecayByRule: {
         'no-implicit-this': {
           warn: 10,
           error: 20,
         },
       },
     },
   };

Disabling Due Dates

If you don't want to use the due dates feature, keeping your todos indefinitely, you can disable them by adding the following config to your package.json:

{
  "lintTodo": {
    "ember-template-lint": {
      "daysToDecay": null
    }
  }
}

Due Date Workflows

Converting errors to todos with warn and error dates that transition the todo to warn after 10 days and error after 20 days:

ember-template-lint . --update-todo --todo-days-to-warn=10 --todo-days-to-error=20

Converting errors to todos with warn and error dates that transition the todo error after 20 days, but doesn't include a warn date:

ember-template-lint . --update-todo --no-todo-days-to-warn --todo-days-to-error=20