Discussion on:

Three tools that make Java code review painless and effective

We use JEdit (www.jedit.org) with the JavaStyle plugin. This eliminates the question of weather a coder does

if( foo )
bar;

or

if( foo ) {
bar;
}

because it formats everything correctly (and the same). It also creates javadocs (albeit those must be completed). The only thing it doesn't do is enforce naming conventions. For that, we use code reviews, but those are fine because we aren't wasting our time on formatting discussions.

With the soon to be released version 3.5 (5/21 will be RC2 for download at http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/ide/next.html) you will be development ready. I have tried all three with NetBeans and the integration is tight. With the performance improvements and additions in the standard distribution why wouldn't try it? For those interested get support at nbusers@netbeans.org where you will find a great knowledgable community where not questions go unanswered. just my opinion.

Another tool that one should check out is James Wanner's Source Monitor. This tool computes all kinds of great metrics such as longest method, most complex method, % comments, nesting levels and other cool metrics. I use it all the time for indentifying code that needs to be reviewed/refactored.


You can download it for free from :

http://www.campwoodsw.com/sourcemonitor.html

it also suppots, C#, delphi, C, C++, VB

Check out Coqua at http://sourceforge.net/projects/coqua/

Coqua is a new code quality tool measuring 5 different metrics with history and per component. I have used it successfully in several projects. Easy to use (Ant-based), quickly configured and installed. And it's open source. Most tools are too complex or provide too many numbers. This one is different and particularly useful for small to medium-sized projects.

It is actually taking Checkstyle and other tools as a base. So you do not need to use more than one tool anymore for a thorough analysis of your code.

You could also take a look at JHawk - a static code analyzer that calculates most of the major metrics - Halstead, CK series, MI, CC etc. It has an eclipse plugin version and although a commercial product it is reasonably priced