Choose at least three available tools for software review and analysis, and summarize their features and drawbacks.


Posted on by Divya Aradhya

The following are three popular software review and analysis tool-

  • Gerrit

Link: https://www.gerritcodereview.com/

Languages supported: Java EE

Licensing: Free

Advantages7–

  • Acts as a repository
  • Auto-review mode – all code pushed to the repository gets reviewd – so not possible to “commit” code changes without review
  • Does not require additional command line tools to “push” the code.
  • Integrated with LDAP with minimal configuration.
  • Granular permissions possible – Allows granting and denying permissions at the repository level and at the low-end branch level. This is makes it easy to create different teams and allows only specified access based on their role and function.
  • Automatic merge features to merge changes and integration
  • Open source software, with active community support, and under active development.
  • Has command line access capability – this helpful is automating and batch-processing reviews and in scripting.
  • Supported by Eclipse, easily integrates into it–  Eclipse is the most popular interface for code development

Disadvantages

  • It works only with GitHub.
  • Cannot handle auditing or post commit review
  • Each new Gerrit account must be explicitly requested. This slows down the on-boarding time of new employees and team members.
  • It has no official APIs. The existing API tools are released by independent developers by reverse-engineering Gerrit’s internal APIs.
  • The ability to add a repository requires escalated administrator privileges
  • Heavy in modules and slow in execution
  • Steep learning curve to get navigate around it and productively use it
  • Phabricator

Link: https://www.phacility.com/

Languages supported: PHP

Licensing: Free and commercial flavors available

Advantages7–

  • Integrates with GitHub, Syn and Hg.
  • Allows auditing and post commit review Integrates loads of tools.
  • Phabricator features include code-review, bug-tracking, source-browsing, and creating a wiki.
  • It is FOSS and PHP-based – and is light
  • Active and responsive development team
  • It has a comprehensive official API library
  • Supports command line instructions
  • Has well laid out logging features
  • Efficient “search” functionality – within a single module and across disparate ones

Disadvantages

  • Doesn’t manage repositories – it is necessary to interface with an external repository management tool.
  • Permissions configurations are not fine-grained and don’t offer much control
  • Codacy8

Link: https://www.codacy.com/

Languages supported: Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, JavaScript, Scala, Swift

Licensing: Free and commercial versions available

            Advantages-

  • Supports multiple languages
  • Works on multiple Operating systems: Windows, Linux, and Mac
  • Integrates with GitHub, Bitbucket, JIRA, YouTrack, Heroku, HipChat and Slack
  • Easy setup
  • Easily customizable
  • Faster employee onboarding
  • Small learning curve
  • Detects duplicated code
  • Detects unused functions and modules

Disadvantages-

  • Slow
  • The free version has limited features
  • No auto-sync feature – has to manually be synced with GitHub

UI is clunky – not very clean