Seven Axis of Source Code Quality

Introduction

1. Potential Bugs:
   • Identify potential bugs by analyzing code for known patterns and anti-patterns that commonly lead to bugs.
   • Flag issues like null pointer dereferences, resource leaks, and other common programming errors.
2. Coding Rules:
   • Enforce coding rules based on industry standards (like MISRA, CERT, etc.) and customizable rules defined by the user or team.
   • Ensure adherence to coding practices such as naming conventions, code formatting, and style consistency.
3. Testing
   • Integrate with CI/CD pipelines and test frameworks to perform testing of the source code.
   • Report on code coverage metrics, ensuring that adequate testing is performed and identifying areas of code that lack sufficient coverage.
4. Duplication
   • Detect duplicated code across projects, helping to reduce redundancy and promoting code reuse.
   • Highlight areas where code could be refactored into reusable components, thereby improving maintainability and reducing the risk of inconsistencies.
5. Comments
   • Analyze comments to ensure they are meaningful and aligned with code changes.
   • It can detect missing or outdated comments, as well as overly complex comments that may indicate unclear code.
6. Architecture and Design
   • Assess software architecture and design by analyzing dependencies, coupling, and cohesion metrics.
   • Identify architectural flaws such as cyclic dependencies or overly complex class structures that could impact maintainability and scalability.
7. Complexity
   • Measure code complexity using metrics like cyclomatic complexity and cognitive complexity.
   • Flag methods or classes that are overly complex, making them harder to understand and maintain.