

Show HN: Watson – inline issue manager with GitHub support - nhmood
http://goosecode.com/watson

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codegeek
This is awesome. We the developers love to put those little comments in code
for issues/to-dos and syncing it with Github is solid. looks like someone
needs to fork it for Python ?

One question though. When an issue is resolved, would that actually go back to
the source file and delete that inline comment OR would it add the text
"resolved" etc. In both cases though, would we not need a new commit to that
source file ? Or does it leave the inline comment in its original state ?

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nhmood
It currently leaves the inline comment in its original state. It didn't seem
like a good idea to have an automated tool touch the code itself, watson
leaves it up to the developer to remove the comment. The "resolved" tag only
appears in the report when the issue is resolved on GitHub or Bitbucket to
notify a user that they can either remove it or ignore working on that issue.

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chrisdevereux
Great idea! I've wanted something like this for a while, but never quite
realised it.

What languages does it support? From the look of the front pages, C-based
languages (C/C++/Obj-C) are ok.

Have you thought about offering this as a service? You could probably hook
into Github and sync issues on commit using the same API that Jenkins uses.

~~~
nhmood
As mentioned below, it currently has support for parsing C / C++, Java, C#,
Bash, Ruby, Perl, and Python files

It is pretty trivial to add support for any other language or comment type
however, take a look at #get_comment_type in lib/watson/parser.rb

Never, thought about offering this as a service, having this as a commit hook
is a very interesting idea though, thanks!

~~~
finnn
What about encouraging use/automated installation of local git hooks, ie. run
watson locally after a successful push. I've just begun looking at git hooks
but this seems like exactly the sort of thing they were intended for

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hellopat
This is cool. I built something similar to this in Node. You start the tool
and it monitors all files in your project folder for changes. Every time you
save, it outputs a JSON object of all your tokened comments. The idea was to
be able to plug it into another service, like a custom todo list app, or
something like this. I haven't quite finished it, but maybe I'll clean it up a
bit and push it to github this weekend.

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Queue29
IBM would like to have a word with you.

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zekenie
I don't understand

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codegeek
Apparently, IBM has a project named "Watson". So he is referring to the name
conflict [0]

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6734100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6734100)

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5vforest
Agree with the general preface of not interrupting your flow with issue
tracking. I've been using ghi (command line GitHub Issues)[1] and couldn't be
happier.

[1] [https://github.com/stephencelis/ghi](https://github.com/stephencelis/ghi)

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podviaznikov
Sounds similar to guys who won ClojueCup:
[http://clojurecup.com/app.html?app=codenotes](http://clojurecup.com/app.html?app=codenotes)

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w0rd-driven
Super nice. Combining this with most support for updating issues via commit
messages this makes it stupid easy to almost never leave the code. The only
thing you likely can't easily do is deal with issue comments but that would be
killer too. Never having to use the githib UI would be the ultimate workflow
boon. I'm never a fan of needing to access websites and remember their UI as
it feels disjointed from my typical working experience.

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Ideabile
I start one month ago a project with less or more the same concept! But this
seems more powerful, and already done! :)

Btw if you are interested checkout:
[http://www.ideabile.com/tirebouchon/doc/?file=index.php](http://www.ideabile.com/tirebouchon/doc/?file=index.php)
( Is just a small preview)

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NikolaTesla
What did you use to create your gif screencasts?

~~~
nhmood
I used LICEcap
([http://www.cockos.com/licecap/](http://www.cockos.com/licecap/)) from Cockos
to generate the GIFs

I wrote the rotating gallery myself, it auto-figures out the duration of the
GIF and does cycling for you. I'll probably release it sometime soon...

~~~
Procrastes
What a clean, concise approach to both the tool and the demo.

Watson also reminds me of Gina Trapani's todo.txt[1], which I love.

1\. [http://todotxt.com/](http://todotxt.com/)

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habosa
The sync with Github is awesome, looks like it would be great.

I have always had "todolist" on my machine aliased to grep -r "TODO*:" .

This basically just searches for all the places where I have TODO comments.
This looks like a better way to do this for teams.

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ozh
Screenshots make this thing really interesting. Need to support more languages
than just Ruby and Perl!

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nhmood
Thanks! The app is written in both Ruby and Perl but it currently has support
for parsing C / C++, Java, C#, Bash, Ruby, Perl, and Python files

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girvo
Should be pretty simple to get it working with PHP right? Also, any plans for
GitLab issues support? If not, that might be fun to hack on this weekend...

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w0rd-driven
Yeah PHP supports // or # as comments so the C language support gets you most
of the way there if not all.

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crowell
I helped to test this and have been using it since. it is much less disruptive
to work flow to just add comments in one place rather than add comments and
have to go through github's ui for work items, bugs, etc.

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blt
I love it. Good example of enriching the development environment without any
kind of special files, databases, etc. Would be great to port it other issue
trackers.

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joshschreuder
Looks awesome! If you remove the comment tag as part of a commit, does it /
could it in future close the issue?

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zekenie
Nice concept! Love it. The two examples are perl and ruby. Does that mean it
wouldn't work in, say, javascript?

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nspragmatic
The example in the gif is actually C++, but JS should be fine according to the
link. Ruby and Perl just happen to be the implementation languages.

> "Avaliable (sic) in Ruby and Perl, but supports all languages!"

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wubbfindel
Looks really promising! Would like to see this work for Gitlab also.

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softworks
Great work. Cloning the repo now. :)

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vocino
This. Is. Awesome.

