rubocop / rubocop/ruby-style-guide

Recommend calling super in initialize

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#809 12 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Description

Many users forget to call super from initialize, which can lead to tricky bugs if the superclass needs to initialize its own state.

Perhaps this should be in the style guide?

I'm not sure if it should be a hard failure, since classes that extend Object or BasicObject or a few other core types don't technically need to invoke super, but the safest pattern would be to always do so.

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
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Research direction

Start by reviewing the style guide's existing guidance around initialize and inheritance, then compare the behavior of subclasses of Object, BasicObject, and other core types. Decide whether the guide should recommend calling super universally or document exceptions, and update the guidance so the recommendation and its rationale are unambiguous.

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Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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