Tracking the feedback tools

[John Brugge]

While I don't package any of the feedback tools that Glean uses in the Glean distribution, I do try to keep track of their updates to see if they affect Glean in any way, or if they open up any new possibilities. There are a few recent updates I've noticed that folks may want to try, or keep tuned for.

- JarAnalyzer v1.2 now supports Java 5 syntax. If you are trying to untangle a knot of dependencies between JARs in your system, or wanting to prevent it from happening, this is one of the few tools out there that can help you. And up until now, you were out of luck if you used Java 5.

- PMD v4.0 got a big efficiency boost from some refactorings, so if performance is an issue, you might want to look at it. One thing I noticed, though, is that they changed the XML attributes they use in their XML output for describing the line numbers of rule violations. This means that the XSL packaged with Glean doesn't create a hyperlink to the java2html source cross-reference. I will be putting out an update soon for this.

- someone has suggested JCSC, a style checker that appears to be in the mold of PMD and Checkstyle, as another tool to script for Glean. I haven't used it before, but it looks like it is another useful choice among coding standard checkers. I'll try to get a script for it into the next release.

- QALab has had a tantalizing description of their next release for a while now. I'm most interested in their support for tracking Emma data, and a fix for their Findbugs support. I've been using a version built from Subversion source for the last few months, and it works well, we just need the official release of it.

Some of the other tools have had releases since Glean came out (UMLGraph, Findbugs, Cobertura) but they don't appear to be that significant, at least in terms of affecting Glean. Certainly use them, by all means, and if you find anything that changes, either good or bad, let the group here know.

Thanks,

John