ALL-COMM0001 · comment_length
Normalize the longest contiguous implementation comment.
This is a deterministic rule for all languages. Read its implementation.
Definition
Section titled “Definition”Consecutive ordinary comment lines form one group, measure chooses what a group’s size is
counted in, and the largest group in the file that is not a legal notice is the one measured.
Documentation comments belong to the prose rules because their job is to explain a public
contract rather than an implementation decision. That raw size is divided by
normalization_max and stated as a percentage, so a group at or past the normalization maximum
reads as one hundred and everything shorter scales beneath it.
A license is left out because it is not a comment about this code. It is the same words in
every file of the project, put there by policy, and the fifteen-line notice one library opens
all of its two hundred and six files with made this rule fail every one of them, which tells a
reader nothing at all. notice_markers names what a notice opens with, so a project spelling
one differently configures it rather than turning the rule off.
The normalization is what makes the number comparable. A raw token count means nothing across two repositories with different comment habits, and a share of an agreed ceiling means the same thing in both. The rule states the share and a project policy decides which share is too much, since a protocol citation and a restated line of code are the same length and worth very different things.
Continue with evidence and references, or open the examples.