DevCodeMetrics

Hi Robert Smyth

There are about 6 other code counter tools. Why not to contribuate to brings your energy on other open source code counter projects ?

Why have you choosen C# ? Why not Python ?

Before to join DevCodeMetrics,
I would like to be convainced of the useful
of this another counter tool...

(:-)liver

Hi Oliver,

It is a good point and it has been a while since i started it so i had to sit back and think (not a bad thing) :-)

Half the reason is that the fun is in the doing of it! Another may be that i missed one on sourceforge?

I need metrics for a development team i'm part of so i did spend quite some time looking at whatever i could find on Sourceforge. The actual metrics gathering seems easy, the thing we need is visualisation, maintainability metrics (not just code counting) and reporting suited to a team. Most importantly Kiviat charts and making it all available via a web browser.

The tools will be installed on the team's build PC and run nightly on code extracted from SourceSafe. The long term intent is for it to gather historical information and integrate it with my other project DevBuildRunner.

Also ... very importantly ... we need to gather the metrics by code classifications. You see much of our code is unit test code and some is automatically generated. These are in conditional compilation or marked by commented sections in the files. One file can have multiple sections. Hence we need a tools that will measure by catagory as well as the metrics have very different meaning.

Tools i found on Sourcforge had little to offer for my needs and it just seemed much easier to start again, especially as i like to code in C#. :-)

I'm after:

- Good visualisation and reporting of "red flags" and "bad smells"

- Reporting by code classification

- LOC, eLOC, Cyclocmatic Complexity, & MI

- Code review stuff, e.g. functions without headers, coding standards, etc

- Web browser

- Tools for automated use

- XML & SQL support


I'm doing the documentation for version 1.0 now (see screen shots on the web page).


Thanks for the feedback ... much appreciated!


Please let me know if u recon i'm off the planet! :-)


Rob

Hello,

I am the author of Kaylo, yet another LOC-counter :-)

I think there's a difference in target usage between Kaylo and DevCodeMetrics. Kaylo is useful for a large array of programming languages (more will be added soon) when a "quick & dirty" estimate is needed. DevCodeMetrics promises interesting features that are far more advanced than Kaylo, which would probably make it more complicated in usage.

Kaylo could be used for a quick count, whereas DevCodeMetrics could be a trustworthy development metric.

And the main argument still is: it's all for fun :-)

Hi Wouter,

Yes, it is for fun :-)

I had not seen Kaylo. I think i will put links to all other metric/counter tools on the DevCodeMetrics web site.

What file formats can Kaylo output metrics to? XML ... if so, i would like to document it as a matrics gathering tool that can be used with the ASP.Net web service i'm about to release. I think the language independence you have is needed.

(The web service just reads the metrics from a file ... a simple database)

Rob

Kaylo outputs its result as html, meaning it contains markup tags as well.

The language independence is just a consequence of the fact that Kaylo doesn't parse the code with a full code grammar, it just reads line by line, and checks the first token. That makes the results inexact, so I refer to it as an estimate. It's a pretty close estimate though.

Hi Robert

Thanks for the explanation of your needs. I have some of yours. Some weeks ago I left from a software contractor (CMM4) specialized on fixed priced development (with a propriotary counting tool). My new software firm has no source metrics knowledge.

The developemnt is like yours : maintenace and new features adding, with conditional compilation for unit test code.

To update your project page,
counting tools from Sourceforge:
- CodeAnalyzer (simple but acuarcy)
- CCCC (object oriented metrics)
- CodeCounter (counts different)
- Kaylo (count mistakes will be fixed)
- SLOC Counter (counts different)
- source code LineCounter (not tested)
- SourceMeter (Java...)
- StoffelLOC (for Java)
- jSMEG (for Java)
- OpenCount

As you, I have not found the right tool.

For maintenace development, I am looking for a tool which compare two versions and count the added, removed and modified lines of code.

I do not know if I should add this metric feature to a source code comparator (as WinMerge) or to an existing countilng tool...

Are you interesting about this metric ?

(:-)liver

Hi Oliver

Many thanks for the list of tools. I will update the page.

Yes i'm very interesting in doing what you ask. That is, show differences in metrics from some user set reference catpure. I was thinking of adding a compare feature to the capture tool that gathers metrics from current code and from SourceSafe ... are you using SourceSafe?

There is a commerical tool that comes close to what you want (not expensive). Have a look at http://www.codehistorian.com/. I use their CodeReview product at work and they give very good support.

Sounds very interesting, thanks for the challenge. Please let me know if there is anything else you would like to see.

BTW: I will be posting an update very soon that has some nice improvements (filtering).

Robert Smyth

Hi Robert Smyth

I see you are working hard, a new software is available each week !

I have checked the CodeHistorian. There are some open source tools which look the same as WinMerge. This kind of tools tells how many code lines have been deleted, added and removed, but do not check if there are comment, LOC or eLOC.

I think the chunck code lines metric could be easier to be added to WinMerge than to DevCodeMetrics. Except if we include an open source diff librairy...
What is your point of view ?

The CodeReviewer is an interresting idea, I haven't yet checked if there is an open source alternative...
I will check on your web site how do you think to enhace code review with DevCodeMetrics...

(:-)liver

Hi Oliver,

I think this has developed to into a different discussion. So please see my reply in the new "Metrics Historian Feature" thread.

Best regards

Robert Smyth