Extract development notes from source code and generate some nice output formats for them.
DNote scans for the common note patterns used by developers of many languages in the form of an all-caps labels followed by a colon. To be more specific, for DNote to recognize a note, it needs to follow this simple set of rules:
1) Notes start with an all-caps label punctuated with a colon, followed by the note’s text.
# LABEL: description ...
2) Any note that requires more than one line must remain flush to the left margin (the margin is set by the first line). This is done because RDoc will mistake the note for a pre block if it is indented.
# LABEL: description ... # continue ...
3) An alternative to the previous limitation is to indent the whole note, making it a <pre> block when rendered by RDoc. Then the text layout is free-form.
# This is a description of something... # # LABEL: description ... # continue ...
That’s all there is to it, if I can convince the developers of RDoc to recognize labels, we may eventually be able to relax the flush rule too, which would be very nice.
There is also a command-line option, --no-colon, which deactives the need for a colon after the note label. However this often produces false positives, so it’s use is discouraged.
As you can see the commandline interface is pretty straight-forward.
USAGE:
dnote [OPTIONS] path1 [path2 ...]
OUTPUT FORMAT: (choose one)
-f, --format NAME select a format [text]
-c, --custom FILE use a custom ERB template
--file shortcut for text/file format
--list shortcut for text/list format
OTHER OPTIONS:
-l, --label LABEL labels to collect
--[no-]colon match labels with/without colon suffix
-m, --marker MARK alternative remark marker
-u --url TEMPLATE url template for line entries (for HTML)
-x, --exclude PATH exclude file or directory
-i, --ignore NAME ignore based on any part of the pathname
-t, --title TITLE title to use in header
-o, --output PATH name of file or directory
-n, --dryrun do not actually write to disk
--debug debug mode
COMMAND OPTIONS:
-T, --templates list available format templates
-h, --help show this help information
The default path is */.rb and the default format is -f rdoc. Here is an example of DNote’s current notes in RDoc format:
= Development Notes == TODO === file://lib/dnote/notes.rb * TODO: Add ability to read header notes. They often have a outline format, rather then the single line. (19) * TODO: Need good CSS file. (22) * TODO: Need XSL? (24) === file://plug/syckle/services/dnote.rb * TODO: Should this service be part of the +site+ cycle? (18) (4 TODOs)
The usual RubyGem’s command will do the trick.
$ sudo gem install dnote
Copyright © 2006 Thomas Sawyer, Rubyworks
DNote is distributable in accordance with the terms of the FreeBSD license.
See COPYING.rdoc for details.