Keep your codebase simple.

• Keep track of technical debt in your code
• Set conditions for removal and catch them during your build

@Debt

The @Debt annotation can be used to track technical debt in your codebase, along with requirement conditions for its removal.

class TemporaryHack {
    @Debt
    val debug = true
}

class ThingDoer {
    @Debt(
        addedDate = "2022-01-01",
        value = "After SOME_FEATURE has launched"
    )
    private fun someHackyMethod() {
        // Here there be monsters
    }
}

The stopShip parameter can be used to print an error message during your build. By default you just get a warning.

@Debt(
    value = "After SOME_FEATURE has launched",
    removalDate = "2023-12-31",
    stopShip = true
)
private fun someHackyMethod() {
    //TODO FIXME
}

With a small modification to your build.gradle file you can use version codes or version names as well as dates in your annotations.

In the case of an Android app, you can pass your version code and name to Papercut using the configuration below.

android {
    defaultConfig {
        versionCode 4
        versionName "0.4.0"
        javaCompileOptions {
            annotationProcessorOptions {
                arguments = ['versionCode': String.valueOf(defaultConfig.versionCode),
                             'versionName': defaultConfig.versionName]
            }
        }
    }
}

The arguments must both be passed as strings. The versionCode will be parsed as an integer and the versionName must match the semantic versioning schema.

You can then use the versionCode or versionName parameters in your annotations as below.

@Debt(versionName = "0.4.0")
private void fetchSomethingRemote() {
    // Temporary hack, please remove
}

@Milestone

You can define milestones by which you would like to refactor or remove code. When you reach a milestone just delete the @Milestone annotated field. If you use constants as in the first example below then deleting the field should cause your IDE to highlight the instances that referenced it. If you use plain strings in your @Debt annotations then they must match your defined @Milestones exactly, as in the second example.

class Milestones {
    @Milestone("LOGIN_REDESIGN") val loginRedesign = "LOGIN_REDESIGN"
    @Milestone("SOME_FEATURE") val someFeature = "SOME_FEATURE"
}

class ImportantThingDoer {
    @Debt(milestone = Milestones.loginRedesign)
    private fun onlyUsedByLoginScreen() {

    }

    @Debt(milestone = "SOME_FEATURE")
    fun callOldAPI() {

    }
}

Download

For Kotlin projects with Kotlin DSL gradle files:

plugins {
    kotlin("kapt") version "1.6.21"
}

dependencies {
    implementation("ie.stu:papercut-annotations:0.10.0")
    kapt("ie.stu:papercut-compiler:0.10.0")
}

For Java projects with groovy gradle files:

dependencies {
    implementation: 'ie.stu:papercut-annotations:0.10.0'
    annotationProcessor: 'ie.stu:papercut-compiler:0.10.0'
}

License

Copyright 2016-2022 Stuart Gilbert

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.