Todos

This is a command-line program written in Go that searches for // TODO: xxxx style comments in a directory and outputs them to the console or in JSON format.

Usage

todos [options] <dir>

The program accepts the following command-line arguments:

• -ignore: A comma-separated list of files and directories to ignore, in gitignore format.
• -sortby: Sort results by field (author, file, line, type, or text)
• -output: Output style (table, file, json). Default: table
• -types: A comma-separated list of comment types to search for. The default is "TODO,FIXME".
• -hidden: Search hidden files and directories.
• -permissive: Permissive mode (looser regex, but can match more than intended, strict format is 'TYPE(author): text' where author is optional)
• -format: Uses the provide go template to output the result
• -no-gitignore: Ignore .gitignore file
• -validate-max: Validate that the number of comments is less than or equal to the max.

Install

To install the program, run the following command:

go install github.com/euforic/todos@latest

Running the Program

To run the program for the current dir, execute the following command:

todos

You can also pass command-line arguments to the program. For example, to search for comments in the directory "myproject" and output the results in JSON format, run the following command:

todos -output json ./myproject

Search a Specific Directory

To search a specific directory, use todos [options] <dir> the first arg is the directory path. For example, to search the directory ~/projects/myproject, run the following command:

todos ~/projects/myproject

Ignore Files and Directories

To ignore files and directories, use the -ignore flag followed by a comma-separated list of files and directories in gitignore format. For example, to ignore files with the extensions .txt and .log, and directories named vendor and node_modules, run the following command:

todos -ignore "*.txt,*.log,vendor/,node_modules/"

Output in Format Style

To output the results in the chosen format (json, file, table), use the -output flag. For example, to output the results in json format, run the following command:

todos -output json

Sort Results

To sort the results, use the -sortby flag followed by the field to sort by. The valid fields are author, file, line, type, and text. For example, to sort the results by comment type, run the following command:

todos -sortby type

To sort in descending order add the postfix :desc. For example to sort by author in decending order, you would run the following command:

todos -sortby author:desc

Search for Different Comment Types

To search for different types of comments, use the -types flag followed by a comma-separated list of comment types. For example, to search for comments with the types TODO, FIXME, and NOTE, run the following command:

todos -types=TODO,FIXME,NOTE

Format

To format the output of the comments, use the -format flag followed by a Go template string. For example, to see all of the comments, use the following command:

todos -format "{{range .}}{{ .File}}\n  Line: {{.Line}}\n  Text: {{.Text}}\n  Author: {{- .Author}}\n\n{{end}}"

To use a template file, use the following command:

todos -format "$(cat some.template)"

Validate Max

To validate the maximum amount of comments does not exceed a certin value, use the -validate-max flag followed by the maximium number of comments. For example, to limit the maximum amount of comments to 20, run the following command:

todos -validate-max 20