Configuring TODO Comments

Introduction

The TODO plugin helps you track and manage TODO comments in your source code directly from Backstage. It scans your repositories for TODO and FIXME comments, providing a centralized view of technical debt and pending tasks across your codebase.

At a Glance

TODO Entity Configuration

Step 1: Add the TODO Tab

The TODO plugin is available as a tab on entity pages in Roadie. Take a look Customising the Roadie UI page for more information.

Supported Comment Formats

The plugin uses the Leasot parser, which supports a wide range of programming languages and comment formats. By default, it recognizes the following patterns:

Basic TODO Comments

// TODO: Ideally this would be working
// FIXME: Nobody knows why this is here

TODO Comments with Author

// TODO(username): Not sure why this works, investigate
// @todo: This worked last Monday /username

Supported Tags

• TODO - General tasks or improvements needed
• FIXME - Issues that need to be fixed
• @todo - Alternative TODO format with @ prefix

Plugin Behavior

What Gets Scanned

• All source code files in your repositories
• Comments in supported programming languages
• TODO and FIXME tags with various formats

What Gets Ignored

• Dot-files and dot-directories (e.g., .git/, .vscode/)
• Trailing comments (comments at the end of code lines)
• Binary files and non-text files

Example of Ignored Format

function reverse(str: string) {
  return str.reverse(); // TODO: optimize - This will NOT be detected
}

References

• TODO Plugin on npm
• TODO Backend Plugin on npm
• Leasot Parser Documentation
• Backstage Integrations Documentation