Tracking and improving software quality with SonarQube

Tracking and improving
software quality with
Sonar(Qube)

SonarQube and me
(Patroklos Papapetrou)
● 15 years experience in software engineering
● Agile team leader
● Active member of the SonarQube user and
development list
● SonarQube plugins contributor
● Addicted to software quality and Continuous
Inspection
● Co-author of SonarQube in Action

Overview
● Code quality (what, why and when)
● The 7 Axes of quality and the Technical Debt
● SonarQube introduction
● SonarQube to the rescue (demo time)

private String _ugly_name;
private String ANOTHER_$UGLY___NAME;
private static String am_i_static;
public void please_work(ArrayList objects){
for (Object object : objects){
if (object == null){
String toString = object.toString();
} else
am_i_static = object.toString();
doSomething(object);
}
}
private void doSomething(Object object) throws
NullPointerException {
throw new NullPointerException(object.
toString());
}

What is code quality?
“It’s an indicator about how quickly
developers can add business value to a
software system”

Why measure?
● Source code is the heart of each system
● Developers don’t write new software. They
maintain “legacy” systems
● A system is (almost) never “finished”
● You can’t improve if you don’t measure
● Broken window theory

When you should measure?
● From project day #0
● Continuously
● Prevent vs post-actions
● Prioritize and plan

What you should measure?
● Not just abstract numbers
● Evolution through time
● Metrics?
● Welcome to the 7 deadly sins of devs

Co

xi

e
pl
ty

Tes
t

m

ver

Co

age

The seven axes of quality

l Bugs
a
otenti

P

ation

up
D

ment

o

ati
lic

ns

Docu

Architecture & Design
Technical Debt
Co

din
g

Ru

les

Technical Debt
“If the debt grows large enough, eventually the company will
spend more on servicing its debt than it invests in increasing
the value of its other assets”
Steve McConnell
(author of code complete)

This is your source code
when you don’t pay your
technical debt

“Good” & “Bad” Technical Debt

How to deal with Technical Debt

What SonarQube is / does
● Free & open source “Code Quality Platform”
● Provides moment-in-time quality snapshots
● Gives trends of lagging and leading
indicators
● Tracks developers’ seven deadly sins (seven
axes of quality )

How does it work?
● Analyzes source code and byte code
● Computes hundreds of metrics
● Associates metrics with analysis snapshots
● Shows the results in dashboards and
widgets accessible by any browser

SonarQube for everything
● Initially developed only for Java projects
● Today supports over twenty languages
Commercial : ABAP, C, C++, Cobol, Natural, PL/SQL,
Visual Basic
Open Source : C++, C#, Flex, Groovy, Android,
Javascript, PHP, Python, XML,
Web(xhtml, jsp , jsf, )

… and for everyone
For developers. Is my code “good”?
How can I improve it?
For testers / QA staff. Which parts of
the system lack unit testing?
For architects. Is the initial design
“broken”? How about complexity?
For managers. Give me the numbers!!
Are we going up or down?

Managing code quality
● Dashboards
● Historical data
● Differential views
● Compare service
● Code reviews
● Action plans

Managing code quality

DEMO TIME

The big picture
● Track and reduce Technical Debt on an
ongoing basis. (Clean up kitchen every day)
● Engage all developers from project day #1
(Not only mums wash the dishes)
● Get alerted when Technical debt is beyond a
threshold (when someone is leaving the
kitchen in a mess)

I have a dream…
...that one day code
quality management
will be as much as
important and
essential is today
source code
management

Thank you
Patroklos Papapetrou
@ppapapetrou76
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ppapapetrou

Tracking and improving software quality with SonarQube

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