Is there an eclipse plugin such that task tags can be parameterized?

Question

I have some TODO tags in my Java code and would like to parameterize them, mainly with

• priorities
• types
• deadlines.

Since I do not want to create new task tags for each combination of these aspects (especially for each deadline), is there a plugin that can handle parameterized TODO tags?

E.g. it should set the task's priority and deadline correctly for

\\TODO !1 ^30.11.1999 #Y2kBug...

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Details:

• I know many consider TODO comments as being bad, so you need not explain...
• Parameters in the style of Remember the milk would be cool, e.g. ^dueDate or !priority.
• If the eclipse plugin could warn me when the deadline is reached, that would be awesone, since I would no longer need extra tests as tickler.
• Maybe some review tool has a superset of the capabilities I want?
• Sometimes I have a TODO that is a a result of another TODO (i.e. when I fix the first TODO, I will have to fix the other, but it's not really the same TODO/feature). So dependencies between TODOs would be helpful.

Answer 1

I'm not aware of a plugin that does specifically what you ask for but, did you consider adopting a bug tracking tool, even if just for personal use? In this case one tool that does something similar to what you ask, but probably not from within Eclipse, is Trac: Its TracLinks feature is close to what you need. There is a Trac/Eclipse bridge, but it appears not to be developed any more.

An Eclipse based alternative would be to use Mylyn, possibly together with an external bug tracking tool. However my impression is that connecting activities with portions of code is rather cumbersome.

Answer 2

You can try using Jupiter, which is used to add comments to existing code for the purpose of reviewing. I don't know if it will still work if you modify the code, however, as it stores the comments in an XML file indexed by filename and line number.