I would like to clarify though some exceptions I have made prior to my final choice. I have excluded all plugins that have to do with additional languages and IDE to keep this post as much as objective I can. I have also excluded all commercial plugins for obvious reasons. After that assumptions I have limited my selections to the following categories :
- Additional Metrics
- Governance
- Integration
- Visualization / Reporting
very bad) to ++ (very good) on the following base indicators:Analysability, Changeability, Stability and Testability. The core idea for this ranking is to measure a series of base metrics such as Lines of Code(LOC), Duplications,Unit Tests,Complexity and Unit Size.
Each of these metrics is then accounted into some of the mentioned indicators and the final result is representing the overall maintainability of the project. We can see the results of this analysis in a graphical (spider) presentation with all four axes of the model. With a glance a this graph you have a global and detailed at the same time view of how easy is to change and maintain your codebase. For me it is the first index I check every morning and if something is not + or ++ then we definitely have done something wrong 👁 ;-)
5.Quality Index Plugin
Have you ever wanted to check a single number (indicator) and understand how healthy is your project? I am sure you have!! Well, the quality Index plugin is exactly what you are looking for. The plugin combines four weighted axes (complexity, coding violations, style violations, test coverage) of quality and produces a ranking between 0 (lowest) and 10(highest). Moreover it calculates a method complexity factor based on the complexity factor mentioned above. Have you ever tried to get a ranking of 10 with this plugin? I think it worths the effort! 👁 :-)
6.Technical Debt Plugin
Last, but not least, the plugin that reports about the interest you have to pay as a developer, as a team, as a company. Technical debt is a term invented by Ward Cunningham to remind us that if we don’t pay our interest from time to time, then it is for sure that eventually this will make our software unmaintainable and hard to add new features or even find the root cause of defect. The plugin, which has a very powerful configuration, represents technical debt in four dimensions.
- Debt Ratio : The percentage of current technical debt to the maximum possible technical debt.
- Cost to reimburse : Cost in your currency to pay all interest and clean up your code
- Work to reimburse : Same as above measured in man days.
- Breakdown : Distribution to the following axes: Duplication, Violations, Complexity, Coverage, Documentation and Design
Be sure that you check its measures to avoid find yourself in bad situation like spaghetti code 👁 :-)
I am pretty sure that there are plenty of interesting Sonar plugins so please feel free to post your comments with your list of them.
Reference: 5+1 Sonar Plugins you must not miss from our JCG partner Papapetrou P. Patroklos at the Only Software matters blog.
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Patroklos PapapetrouJanuary 9th, 2012Last Updated: October 21st, 2012
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