Technical Debt Idea: Create Issues for Any TODO / FIXME / HACK Comments in the Codebase

[chrisdebian]

This was my idea, but I've used AI to help the issue look a bit more presentable.

While looking through the code, I wondered whether it might be useful to do a gentle “self-audit” of the codebase to identify any places where comments like TODO, FIXME, or HACK appear. These kinds of comments are usually great hints about improvements the original author intended to return to — and turning them into small, trackable GitHub issues could make it easier for contributors to help.

Having a place to track them going forward might still be useful.

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💡 Proposal

Do a quick scan of the repository for common “tech-debt markers” and, for each one found, turn it into a small GitHub issue.

Suggested keywords to scan for:

TODO- Results found

FIXME- None found

HACK- Results found

XXX- Possibly old ideas in the comments

TEMP

WORKAROUND- Results found

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📋 Suggested Checklist

I used the GitHub search function, at the top of the repo webpage.

[ ] Scan .ino, .h, .cpp and related files for the above keywords.

[ ] For each match, check whether it represents real follow-up work.

[ ] Create a separate GitHub issue for each meaningful item.

[ ] Link each issue back to the specific file + line number for easy reference.

[ ] Close or ignore any items that are not actionable (e.g., historical comments).

[ ] Optionally introduce a small convention for future comments (e.g., // TODO(maintainer): …).

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🤝 Why this could help

Makes future contributions easier

Helps newcomers understand where help is welcome

Keeps the codebase organised as the project grows

Prevents hidden technical debt from piling up

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Totally optional of course, I'm just trying to help.

[dtpoirot-git]

+1

Excellent idea.

I worked at Coverity/Synopsys in the static analysis tools group. We had a 'curse word' checker which would look for those words and others and create issues in the tracking database.