What This is for?

Read this article about Puzzle Driven Development. Check also patent application US 12/840,306

Also, check 0pdd.com: a hosted service, where this command line tool works for you. Read this first: PDD in Action.

How to Install?

Install it first:

$ gem install pdd

How to Run?

Run it locally and read its output:

$ pdd --help

You can exclude certain files from the search, for example:

pdd --exclude=src/**/*.java --exclude=target/**/*
pdd --exclude=src/**/*.java # exclude .java files in src/
pdd --exclude=src/**/* # exclude all files in src/

How to Format?

Every puzzle has to be formatted like this (pay attention to the leading space in every consecutive line):

/**
 * @todo #[issue#]<:[time]></[role]> <[description]>
 */
[related code]

[] - Replace with apropriate data (see text enclosed in brackets) <> - Omitable (enclosed data can be left out)

Example:

/**
 * @todo #234:15m/DEV This is something to do later
 *  in one of the next releases. I can't figure out
 *  how to implement it now, that's why the puzzle.
 */
void sendEmail() {
  throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

If you use it in combination with 0pdd, after processing this text, the issue titled "File.java:10-13: This is something to do later in one of ..." will be created. The specified markers will be included in the issues body along with some predefined text. If your comment is longer than 40 characters, it will be truncated in the title.

It starts with @todo, followed by a space and a mandatory puzzle marker. Possible formats of puzzle markers (it doesn't matter what the line starts with and where it is located, as long as you have that @todo right in front of the mandatory marker):

// @todo #224
/* @todo #TEST-13 */
# @todo #55:45min
@todo #67/DES
;; @todo #678:40m/DEV

Here DES and DEV are the roles of people who must fix that puzzles; 45min and 40m is the amount of time the puzzle should take; 224, TEST-13, 55, 67, and 678 are the IDs of the tickets these puzzles are coming from.

Markers are absolutely necessary for all puzzles, because they allow us to build a hierarchical dependency tree of all puzzles, like this one, for example. Technically, of course, you can abuse the system and put a dummy #1 marker everywhere.

How to Configure Rules?

You can specify post-parsing rules for your puzzles, in command line, for example:

$ pdd --rule=min-estimate:60 --rule=max-estimate:120

These two parameters will add two post-parsing rules min-estimate and max-estimate with parameters. Each rule may have an optional parameter specified after a colon.

Here is a list of rules available now:

min-estimate:15 blocks all puzzles that don't have an estimate or their estimates are less than 15 minutes.
max-estimate:120 blocks all puzzles with estimates over 120 minutes.
available-roles:DEV,IMP,DES specifies a list of roles that are allowed in puzzles. Puzzles without explicitly specified roles will be rejected.
min-words:5 blocks puzzles with descriptions shorter than five words.
max-duplicates:1 blocks more than one duplicate of any puzzle. This rule is used by default and you can't configure it at the moment, it must always be set to 1.

You can put all command line options into .pdd file. The options from the file will be used first. Command line options may be added on top of them. See, how it is done in yegor256/0pdd.

How to read XML

The XML produced will look approximately like this (here is a real example):

<puzzles>
  <puzzle>
    <ticket>516</ticket>
    <estimate>15</estimate>
    <role>DEV</role>
    <id>516-ffc97ad1</id>
    <lines>61-63</lines>
    <body>This has to be fixed later...</body>
    <file>src/test/java/org/takes/SomeTest.java</file>
    <author>Yegor Bugayenko</author>
    <email>[email protected]</email>
    <time>2018-01-01T21:09:03Z</time>
  </puzzle>
</puzzles>

XSD Schema is here. The most interesting parts of each puzzle are:

ticket is a ticket name puzzle marker starts from, in most cases it will be the number of GitHub issue.
estimate is the amount of minutes the puzzle is supposed to take.
id is a unique ID of the puzzle. It is calculated by the internal algorithm that takes into account only the text of the puzzle. Thus, if you move the puzzle from one file to another, the ID won't change. Also, changing the location of a puzzle inside a file won't change its ID.
lines is where the puzzle is found, inside the file.

How to contribute

Read these guidelines. Make sure you build is green before you contribute your pull request. You will need to have Ruby 2.3+ and Bundler installed. Then:

$ bundle update
$ rake

If it's clean and you don't see any error messages, submit your pull request.

This is how you run the tool locally to test how it works:

$ ./bin/pdd --help

License

(The MIT License)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.