rust/doc/roadmap-2021.md

# Roadmap 2021

# Summary

This Roadmap lays out the plans for Clippy in 2021:

- Improving usability and reliability
- Improving experience of contributors and maintainers
- Develop and specify processes

Members of the Clippy team will be assigned tasks from one or more of these
topics. The team member is then responsible to complete the assigned tasks. This
can either be done by implementing them or by providing mentorship to interested
contributors.

# Motivation

With the ongoing growth of the Rust language and with that of the whole
ecosystem, also Clippy gets more and more users and contributors. This is good
for the project, but also brings challenges along. Some of these challenges are:

- More issues about reliability or usability are popping up
- Traffic is hard to handle for a small team
- Bigger projects don't get completed due to the lack of processes and/or time
  of the team members

Additionally, according to the [Rust Roadmap 2021], clear processes should be
defined by every team and unified across teams. This Roadmap is the first step
towards this.

[Rust Roadmap 2021]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3037

# Explanation

This section will explain the things that should be done in 2021. It is
important to note, that this document focuses on the "What?", not the "How?".
The later will be addressed in follow-up tracking issue, with an assigned team
member.

The following is split up in two major sections. The first section covers the
user facing plans, the second section the internal plans.

## User Facing

Clippy should be as pleasant to use and configure as possible. This section
covers plans that should be implemented to improve the situation of Clippy in
this regard.

### Usability

In the following, plans to improve the usability are covered.

#### No Output After `cargo check`

Currently when `cargo clippy` is run after `cargo check`, it does not produce
any output. This is especially problematic since `rust-analyzer` is on the rise
and it uses `cargo check` for checking code. A fix is already implemented, but
it still has to be pushed over the finish line. This also includes the
stabilization of the `cargo clippy --fix` command or the support of multi-span
suggestions in `rustfix`.

- [#4612](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy/issues/4612)

#### `lints.toml` Configuration

This is something that comes up every now and then: a reusable configuration
file, where lint levels can be defined. Discussions about this often lead to
nothing specific or to "we need an RFC for this". And this is exactly what needs
to be done. Get together with the cargo team and write an RFC and implement such
a configuration file somehow and somewhere.

- [#3164](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy/issues/3164)
- [cargo#5034](https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/5034)
- [IRLO](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/proposal-cargo-lint-configuration/9135/8)

#### Lint Groups

There are more and more issues about managing lints in Clippy popping up. Lints
are hard to implement with a guarantee of no/few false positives (FPs). One way
to address this might be to introduce more lint groups to give users the ability
to better manage lints, or improve the process of classifying lints, so that
disabling lints due to FPs becomes rare. It is important to note, that Clippy
lints are less conservative than `rustc` lints, which won't change in the
future.

- [#5537](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy/issues/5537)
- [#6366](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy/issues/6366)

### Reliability

In the following, plans to improve the reliability are covered.

#### False Positive Rate

In the worst case, new lints are only available in nightly for 2 weeks, before
hitting beta and ultimately stable. This and the fact that fewer people use
nightly Rust nowadays makes it more probable that a lint with many FPs hits
stable. This leads to annoyed users, that will disable these new lints in the
best case and to more annoyed users, that will stop using Clippy in the worst.
A process should be developed and implemented to prevent this from happening.

- [#6429](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy/issues/6429)

## Internal

(The end of) 2020 has shown, that Clippy has to think about the available
resources, especially regarding management and maintenance of the project. This
section address issues affecting team members and contributors.

### Management

In 2020 Clippy achieved over 1000 open issues with regularly between 25-35 open
PRs. This is simultaneously a win and a loss. More issues and PRs means more
people are interested in Clippy and in contributing to it. On the other hand, it
means for team members more work and for contributors longer wait times for
reviews. The following will describe plans how to improve the situation for both
team members and contributors.

#### Clear Expectations for Team Members

According to the [Rust Roadmap 2021], a document specifying what it means to be
a member of the team should be produced. This should not put more pressure on
the team members, but rather help them and interested folks to know what the
expectations are. With this it should also be easier to recruit new team members
and may encourage people to get in touch, if they're interested to join.

#### Scaling up the Team

More people means less work for each individual. Together with the document
about expectations for team members, a document defining the process of how to
join the team should be produced. This can also increase the stability of the
team, in case of current members dropping out (temporarily). There can also be
different roles in the team, like people triaging vs. people reviewing.

#### Regular Meetings

Other teams have regular meetings. Clippy is big enough that it might be worth
to also do them. Especially if more people join the team, this can be important
for sync-ups. Besides the asynchronous communication, that works well for
working on separate lints, a meeting adds a synchronous alternative at a known
time. This is especially helpful if there are bigger things that need to be
discussed (like the projects in this roadmap). For starters bi-weekly meetings
before Rust syncs might make sense.

#### Triaging

To get a handle on the influx of open issues, a process for triaging issues and
PRs should be developed. Officially, Clippy follows the Rust triage process, but
currently no one enforces it. This can be improved by sharing triage teams
across projects or by implementing dashboards / tools which simplify triaging.

### Development

Improving the developer and contributor experience is something the Clippy team
works on regularly. Though, some things might need special attention and
planing. These topics are listed in the following.

#### Process for New and Existing Lints

As already mentioned above, classifying new lints gets quite hard, because the
probability of a buggy lint getting into stable is quite high. A process should
be implemented on how to classify lints. In addition, a test system should be
developed to find out which lints are currently problematic in real world code
to fix or disable them.

- [#6429 (comment)](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy/issues/6429#issuecomment-741056379)
- [#6429 (comment)](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy/issues/6429#issuecomment-741153345)

#### Processes

Related to the point before, a process for suggesting and discussing major
changes should be implemented. It's also not clearly defined when a lint should
be enabled or disabled by default. This can also be improved by the test system
mentioned above.

#### Dev-Tools

There's already `cargo dev` which makes Clippy development easier and more
pleasant. This can still be expanded, so that it covers more areas of the
development process.

- [#5394](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy/issues/5394)

#### Contributor Guide

Similar to a Clippy Book, which describes how to use Clippy, a book about how to
contribute to Clippy might be helpful for new and existing contributors. There's
already the `doc` directory in the Clippy repo, this can be turned into a
`mdbook`.

#### `rustc` integration

Recently Clippy was integrated with `git subtree` into the `rust-lang/rust`
repository. This made syncing between the two repositories easier. A
`#[non_exhaustive]` list of things that still can be improved is:

1. Use the same `rustfmt` version and configuration as `rustc`.
2. Make `cargo dev` work in the Rust repo, just as it works in the Clippy repo.
   E.g. `cargo dev bless` or `cargo dev update_lints`. And even add more things
   to it that might be useful for the Rust repo, e.g. `cargo dev deprecate`.
3. Easier sync process. The `subtree` situation is not ideal.

## Prioritization

The most pressing issues for users of Clippy are of course the user facing
issues. So there should be a priority on those issues, but without losing track
of the internal issues listed in this document.

Getting the FP rate of warn/deny-by-default lints under control should have the
highest priority. Other user facing issues should also get a high priority, but
shouldn't be in the way of addressing internal issues.

To better manage the upcoming projects, the basic internal processes, like
meetings, tracking issues and documentation, should be established as soon as
possible. They might even be necessary to properly manage the projects,
regarding the user facing issues.

# Prior Art

## Rust Roadmap

Rust's roadmap process was established by [RFC 1728] in 2016. Since then every
year a roadmap was published, that defined the bigger plans for the coming
years. This years roadmap can be found [here][Rust Roadmap 2021].

[RFC 1728]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1728-north-star.html

# Drawbacks

## Big Roadmap

This roadmap is pretty big and not all items listed in this document might be
addressed during 2021. Because this is the first roadmap for Clippy, having open
tasks at the end of 2021 is fine, but they should be revisited in the 2022
roadmap.