Misleading Naming

[ericandrewlewis]

This package has misleading and confusing naming. It's called 'Phpcs,' however that's only one of the four PHP tools it offers, and not really any more important than the others. The most confusing space this affects is the settings file for the package. There's a package-level setting whether to run any of the components in the package called 'phpcs_execute_on_save' - and then the setting whether to run the PHP Code Sniffer script called 'phpcs_command_on_save'. Not exactly self-describing here.

At the level of the package name itself, I wonder if something could be done. PHP "Tools" actually seems relevant. Or, we could break all these up into separate packages, which actually seems like a good idea to me, so people searching for a PHP code linter would find and install only what they want. Thoughts?

[benmatselby]

This is an interesting discussion Eric.

You are very right, this plugin started out just using PHP_CodeSniffer, hence the name. It then became apparent that I could add in other tools very quickly that would enhance my working pattern. I then started to change the title in the README etc, but by then it was already documented that the name was Phpcs, and was in the package control repo.

I also wrote the sublime-docblox plugin which got renamed sublime-phpdocumentor when those two open source projects merged, and this becomes confusing for the people who had linked to my website and wrote articles about the plugin named sublime-docblox

So a couple of things from me:

• You're right that the naming in the settings is slightly off, but this is easily changed. I've followed a naming convention for the other tools, so updating the package level setting names makes sense. I hoped that the README file would explain the settings, but if this isn't the case, I can try and pad that information out as well?
• PHP Tools as a name, for me, doesn't describe what it does. For me, this tool is about checking/sniffing the code and highlighting issues. Since we have PHP_CodeSniffer in the community I can see why it is misleading, and that falls in line with what I mentioned above. PHP Checker may be more descriptive?
• I've searched google for "Sublime Text PHP Linter" and this plugin comes third, and I've also search the package control website for php linter, and this plugin comes top, so I'm not sure that searching is a big issue?
• Lastly, breaking this plugin up into potentially 4 plugins would result in a lot of code duplication, and wouldn't bring that much benefit? If you only want to use one of the tools within this plugin that is acceptable and designed for. Within my team at work all developers have all the toolsets installed, so splitting this into more plugins would potentially being an overhead for installation.

Let me know what you think, and I can start to raise some issues covering off what changes are desirable. Also, thank you for raising this issue and sparking a discussion, always a pleasure to get feedback and areas for improvement

[ericandrewlewis]

Hey Ben, thanks for the feedback. I agree, PHP Checker is an apt name. If we went forward with that, renaming the settings key prefixes would follow suit, and nullify the issue there.

Also agree with you about the ease of upkeep for one package instead of four, and since they are all related in function it's a fine idea to keep them bundled.

[benmatselby]

After some thought, I am going to leave the name of the package as it is. For me, it seems like it would do more harm than good at this stage. Happy to reconsider in the future if more people raise this.

Apologies if this is disappointing or causes you issues.