Task Scanner for ABAP in Eclipse

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In most projects, comments such as TODO, FIXME and XXX are used for planning and defining tasks in the source code of development objects. But it is usually difficult (especially in big projects) to keep track of these tasks and to make sure that they don’t get to production.

Eclipse has a built-in support for tracking these comments and displaying them on the “Tasks” view but unfortunately this only works for programming languages such as Java and C#, but not for ABAP.

There’re different ways to “simulate” this feature through different types of approaches such as using pragma ##TODO to display warning messages as it is written in this blog or to use a dedicated object and the where used list function like its mentioned in this blog.

But what if we had a special plugin made for ABAP which would provide support for managing these tasks and help us keep track on them? Well we have it now.

Let me introduce you to

ABAP Task Scanner – An Open Source Eclipse plugin for managing tasks in ABAP coding

What does it do?

Well as you guessed from the introduction, it searches and lists TODO, FIXME and XXX tasks in ABAP objects. With this plugin you can scan for pretty much any type of ABAP development objects from programs to local classes.

This plugin provides support for TODO Driven Development and makes it easier to track and manage tasks in the source code of ABAP objects.

What are the main features?

As the main features, it provides the possibility to scan and display tasks of individual objects and of all objects in a package including its sub packages depending on the "Deep Scan" option.

You can even scan objects in a Transport request via the “Transport Organizer” view of Eclipse, define and scan custom tags and also scan only objects created by you.

Additionally, if a program is scanned then it will also check all of its includes.

If a class is checked then it will automatically check its local classes (Local Types) and its local Unit tests (Test Classes) as well.

How to use it?

Just click right on the object, go to Task Scanner and then press Scan Source Code. Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl + 9 on the selected object. Then the plugin will scan and display markers for all found tasks on the Problems view with the description of the task, the object name and also the line number. By double clicking on the marker, you can navigate to the exact line where the task was found and see it highlighted.

For scanning objects in a Transport request, open the Transport Organizer view and click right on the Transport request then select Task Scanner and press Scan Source Code. Or you can just press Ctrl + 9 on the selected Transport request. All tasks will be displayed on the Problems view.

In the preferences page, you can change the scan options and parameters for your specific needs. You can include/exclude tags, set a custom text to scan, enable deep scan and scan only objects created by you.

And that's pretty much it.

Prerequisites

There're only two prerequisites to use the plugin:

1. ABAP Development Tools (ADT) must be installed on the Eclipse installation


2. Following abapGit Repository must be installed on the target system: https://github.com/AkyshBaymuhammedov/ADT_TODO_Plugin_ABAP.git (Netweaver 7.40 SP08+)

References

The feature is available in Eclipse Marketplace: https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/task-scanner-abap-eclipse

Note

I'm planning to further enhance this plugin with new updates, so please let me know if you have any new features or suggestions in mind. 🙂

I hope you find it useful!

Akysh