Blocked is an Elixir-library that helps you to keep track of when hotfixes can be removed by showing compile-time warnings when issues (in your project repository or any other source-code GitHub repository) are closed.

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Blocked was made to improve the quality of your project's code over time: It automates away the human task of checking whether certain hot-fixes, 'temporary patches' or 'duct-tape code' are still required. This makes it less scary to add a temporary workaround to your codebase, because you'll know the minute it is no longer necessary!

Basic features:

• Runs at compile-time as a macro.
• Prints a compile-time warning any time an issue is closed that a piece of your code was waiting for.
• Works for your own project issues as well as for issues of any other GitHub-hosted repository.
• Allows specifying both 'hotfix' and optionally a 'desired' code block, to make it clear to future readers of your code what can be changed once the related issue is closed.
• Configurable to work on private repositories as well.
• By default performs only checking in Continuous Integration, to keep local compilation fast.

Installation

The package can be installed by adding blocked to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:blocked, "~> 0.9.0"}
  ]
end

Documentation can be found at https://hexdocs.pm/blocked.

Usage

1. Put require Blocked in your module to be able to use the exposed macro.
2. Write Blocked.by(issue_reference, reason, do: ..., else: ...) wherever you have to apply a temporary fix.

Example:

defmodule Example do
  require Blocked

  def main do
    IO.puts("Hello, world!")
    Blocked.by("#42", "This code can be removed when the issue is closed") do
      hacky_workaround()
    end
    
    # The reason is optional
    Blocked.by("#69") do
      a_quick_fix()
    end
    
    # It is possible to indicate
    # the desired 'ideal' code as well, by passing an `else` block:
    Blocked.by("#1337") do
      ugly_fallback()
    else
      beautiful_progress()
    end
    
    # If the blockage is more general, you can also leave out the `do` block.
    Blocked.by("#65535", "This whole module can be rewritten once we're on the new Elixir version!")
    
    # Blocked supports many ways of referring to an issue
    Blocked.by("#13")
    Blocked.by("elixir#13")
    Blocked.by("elixir/13")
    Blocked.by("elixir-lang/elixir#13")
    Blocked.by("elixir-lang/elixir/13")
    Blocked.by("https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/issues/13")
  end
end

As example, a warning that might be generated once an issue is closeed looks like this:

When will Blocked.by run?

By default, the checks will only be performed inside Continuous Integration environments. (That is, any place where System.get_env("CI") is set). The reason for this default is that the checks perform HTTP requests to the GitHub-API, which will slow down compilation somewhat.

This can be overridden by altering the warn-field in the Blocked.Config for a particular environment.

What if I have a private GitHub-repository?

By default, Blocked will run with an unauthenticated GitHub-client. You can configure the client by specifying an API token (of an account that has access to the repository in question) in the Blocked.Config.

Supported Issue Reference patterns

1. 123 or #123: issue number. Assumes that the isue is part of the current repository.
2. reponame/123 or reponame#123: repository + issue number. Assumes that the repository is part of the same owner/organization as the current repository.
3. owner/reponame/123 or owner/reponame#123: owner/organization name + repository + issue number.
4. https://github.com/owner/reponame/issues/123: Full-blown URL to the page of the issue.

Automatic Repository Detection

We use the git remote get-url command to check for the remote URL of the current repository and attempt to extract the owner/organization and repository name from that. We check against the upstream remote (useful in a forked project), and the origin remote.

If your setup is different, you can configure the repository and owner name by specifying custom settings in the Blocked.Config.

Changelog

• 0.9.1 - Fixes bug where HTTP was not always available at compile-time and improves stacktrace information.
• 0.9.0 - Initial publicly-released version

Roadmap & nice-to-haves

PR's are very much accepted!

• Maybe at some point support GitLab, Bitbucket or other repository-hosts as well?

Attribution

This library is inspired and borrows heavily from the Rust library of the same name.

See Also

• fixme-elixir which triggers afer a certain point in time, rather than when an issue is closed.

Is it any good?

yes