Comment Tree

VS Code Extension for exploring and navigating all comments in the project through a tree view in the side panel.

⚡ High Performance: Optimized scanning with comprehensive exclusion rules to skip node_modules, build outputs, and cache directories for fast operation.

Features

• Collect all types of comments from project files:

  • Single line comments (//, #, --)
  • Multiline comments (/* */, <!-- -->, {# #})
  • Support for all popular programming languages

• High performance scanning with comprehensive exclusion rules

• Customizable file extensions through VS Code settings

• Customizable regular expressions for finding comments

• Flexible exclusion rules for files and folders (excludes node_modules, build dirs, caches by default)

• Tree view with grouping by files

• Click on a comment opens the file on the desired line

• Detailed tips with information about the file and position

• Update command for re-scanning

• Debug command to test exclusion rules

Installation

From VS Code Marketplace

1. Open VS Code
2. Go to Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X)
3. Search for "Comment Tree"
4. Click Install

From VSIX File

1. Download comment-tree-x.x.x.vsix from the Releases section
2. Open VS Code
3. Open Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P)
4. Type "Extensions: Install from VSIX"
5. Select the downloaded .vsix file
6. Click Install

Usage

1. Open the workspace with the project
2. In the side panel find the "Comments" section
3. Expand the files to view the found comments
4. Click on a comment to navigate to it in the code
5. Use the update button to re-scan comments
6. Use the "Test Exclusions" command to verify that exclusions are working correctly

Settings

The extension provides the following settings in settings.json:

commentExplorer.regex

Regular expression for finding comments (default: //.*|/\\*[\\s\\S]*?\\*/|<!--[\\s\\S]*?-->)

commentExplorer.fileExtensions

Array of file extensions to include in scanning (default includes popular languages)

commentExplorer.exclude

Array of exclusion patterns for files and folders. By default, excludes common directories and files that don't contain user comments:

• **/node_modules/** - Node.js dependencies
• **/dist/**, **/build/**, **/out/** - Build outputs
• **/.git/**, **/.vscode/** - Version control and IDE files
• **/.next/**, **/.nuxt/**, **/.cache/** - Framework caches
• **/coverage/**, **/*.min.js, **/*.map - Generated/test files

Example settings:

{
  "commentExplorer.regex": "//.*|#.*|--.*|/\\*[\\s\\S]*?\\*/",
  "commentExplorer.fileExtensions": ["js", "ts", "py", "java"],
  "commentExplorer.exclude": ["**/node_modules/**", "**/dist/**", "**/.git/**"]
}

Commands

The extension provides the following commands:

• Comment Tree: Refresh - Re-scan all comments in the workspace
• Comment Tree: Test Exclusions (Debug) - Test that exclusion rules are working correctly

Project structure

• src/extension.ts - Entry point of the extension
• src/commentTreeProvider.ts - Data provider for the comment tree
• src/commentItem.ts - Class for representing comments in the tree

Development

Requirements

• Node.js
• npm
• VS Code

Building

npm install
npm run compile

Code formatting

# Format all files
npm run format

# Check formatting without changes
npm run format-check

Running in development mode

npm run watch

Testing

npm run test

Known Limitations

• Maximum 10000 files are scanned at once for performance
• Some complex regular expressions may work slowly
• Large files may affect performance
• Comments in binary files are not supported

License

MIT License

Support

If you found a bug or want to suggest an improvement, please create an issue in the project repository.