Description

DR-Tools Metric was born out of the need for a simple tool that could support developers in their daily work by presenting meaningful metrics and statistics related to the code.

The vast majority of metric tools are server-side, requiring multiple configurations and complex environments to run. DR-Tools Metric, on the other hand, is a lightweight and straightforward command-line interface (CLI) tool. We believe the command line offers great power and flexibility.

We studied and selected a set of contextualized metrics that, when combined, can provide valuable insights to developers—even before they start analyzing the code. Our goal is also to present these metrics in a way that makes analysis easier and more intuitive. Additionally, we’ve defined a set of analysis heuristics based on these metrics to streamline the process and help educate developers during their investigations.

Requirements and Install Instruction

• Only requirement: JRE version 8
• Download the tool and unzip it to a directory
• We recommend adding the directory to your system PATH — and you're all set!

Main Features

• Command-line (CLI) usage
• Flexible
• Download and run!
• Context-selected and sorted metrics
• Supported languages: Java (for now)
• Output formats: console, CSV, and JSON
• Easy filtering of results using the --top option
• Various metric statistics, including average, median, standard deviation, first quartile, third quartile, range, min/max values, and upper fence (for outlier detection)
• Contextualized results to facilitate analysis and investigation (metric thresholds are available here)
• To visualize project data graphs, simply use drtools-metric visualization. Generate the data using the -mv option and --save output format.

Context and Metrics

The DR-Tools Metric presents the 44 contextualized metrics by summary, namespaces, types, methods, dependencies, and coupling. The following is the list of metrics by context:

• Summary (15): Total of namespaces, total of types, mean number of types/namespaces, total of lines of code (SLOC), average number of SLOC/types (with median and standard deviation), total of methods, average number of methods/types (with median and standard deviation), total of complexity (CYCLO), and average number of complexity/types (with median and standard deviation)
• Namespaces (2): Number of classes/types (NOC) and number of abstract classes (NAC)
• Types (10): Lines of code (SLOC), number of methods (NOM), number of public methods (NPM), class complexity (WMC), number of dependencies (DEP), number of internal dependencies (I-DEP), Number of other types that depend on a given type (FAN-IN), number of other types referenced by a type (FAN-OUT), number of fields/attributes (NOA), and lack of cohesion in methods (LCOM3)
• Methods (5): Lines of code (MLOC), cyclomatic complexity (CYCLO), number of invocations (CALLS), nested block depth (NBD), and number of parameters (PARAM)
• Namespace Coupling (5): Afferent coupling (CA), efferent coupling (CE), instability (I), abstractness degree (A), and normalized distance (D)
• Type Coupling (4): number of dependencies (DEP), number of internal dependencies (I-DEP), Number of other types that depend on a given type (FAN-IN), and number of other types referenced by a type (FAN-OUT)
• Dependencies (3): General dependencies (DEP), internal dependencies (I-DEP), and cyclic dependencies

Video Demonstration

Usage examples

Below we list many examples of using DR-Tools Metric features.

• Viewing tool usage options

prompt> drtools-metric

• Viewing metric thresholds (console), using the option -mt

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -mt --console

• Viewing project summary information (console), using the option -s

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -s --console

• Viewing information about namespaces (console), using the option -n

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -n --console

• Viewing information about types (console), using the option -t

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -t --console

• Viewing information about the top 10 complex types (console), using the option --top

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -t --console --top 10

• Viewing information about types (CSV), using the option --csv

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -t --csv > drtools-metric-types.csv

• Viewing information about types (JSON), using the option --json

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -t --json > drtools-metric-types.json

• Generating all files needed for viewing with drtools-metric-visualization, using the -mv option and --save output

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -mv --save

• Viewing information about methods (console), using the option -m

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -m --console

• Verifying if the project has cyclic dependencies, using the option -cd

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -cd --console

• Viewing information about all dependencies (console), using the option -d

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -d --console

• Viewing information about internal dependencies (console), using the option -id

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -id --console

• Viewing information about namespace coupling (console), using the option -nc

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -nc --console

• Viewing information about type coupling (console), using the option -tc

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -tc --console

• Viewing information about statistic of method metrics (console), using the option -sm

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -sm --console

• Viewing information about statistic and type metrics (console), using the option -sat

prompt> drtools-metric \repo\DrToolsMetric\src -sat --console