Tracking Code Quality

Presentation by Marty Andrews
The Cyclomatic Complexity of a method is really the minimum number of unit tests needed to test very path in a method.
By reducing CC, usually by breaking large methods down, you reduce the number of tests you need to write!
Complexian - www.cogentconsulting.com.au/resources/complexian/index.html
FindBugs - usually needs human to interpret. Good to hook in but not run in CI. Human can run so often
SourceMonitor
JOODI - Package level checking. Good to enforce certain layers only access other layers e.g.
Spec#
Clover2
- Project Risk Coverage Cloud - A tag cloud containing every class that exposes those which have low test coverage but high cyclomatic complexity
- Custom Columns - Define your own quality metric by combining any of Clover's built in ones
- Track code quality over time using historical charts and reports

There was some discussion over what is an unacceptably high CCN. I (JerryShea) don't like to see CCN above 20 personally. I have seen this table reproduced in a few places, including this linuxjournal article:

CCN	Interpretation
1-10	a simple program, without much risk
11-20	more complex, moderate risk
21-50	complex, high risk
51+	untestable, very high risk

T.J. McCabe, "A complexity measure," IEEE Trans. Software Eng. vol. SE2, no 4, pp 308-320, 1976
B.A. Nejmeh, "NPATH: a measure of execution path complexity and its applications," Commun, ACM, vol 31, no 2, pp 188-200, 1988.
Wikipedia:Cyclomatic_complexity
Complexity Analyser for Java, http://www.martyandrews.net/resources/complexian.html
Complexity Analyser for C++, http://gnocchi.sourceforge.net/
Clover2, http://atlassian.com/clover

Navigation menu