Code Analysis and Metrics in Visual Studio

So, today morning, while trying to set my Quarterly goals on a lazy Friday, I came up with the issue of quantifying my work in the form of code metrics (in case you haven't figured out already, I am a software developer at my first job in the US, working specifically on C#).

So, my company uses Visual Studio Professional 2008 and I was kinda excited to find out the blog of the Code Analysis and Metrics team at Microsoft as my first search result in Google.

Going quickly through the article, I couldn't wait to give the plugin/utility a try and get some cursory metrics for the code I was working on. The screenshots showed some real interesting stats, some of which were Cyclomatic complexity, Executable lines of code, Maintainability Index, Number of Instructions among others. What I would soon find out though was that the code analysis and metrics feature was only available on the Visual Studio Team Edition SKU. Going through the comments I did find out that a few others had requested that the feature be part of Professional sku (I would have rallied behind them as well, but the article was closed for comments).

Anyways, a few comments there suggested alternative tools/plugins for those sorta code metrics. A couple that I came across and liked were Exact Magic software StudioTools. No only was it free, but it provided pretty much all of the information that the Team Edition Code Analysis provides.



It's free and looks good on first impression.

Another tool/plugin I came across was NDepend. This one I haven't tried, but the screen looked real flashy in this one. Plus, I think they have something where you could specify rules and stuff for the code analysis and the type of metrics that you wanna get. Sounded interesting, but I guess I wanted to give Exact Magic's piece of magic a shot before I move on.

So, I guess next time I have my one-on-one with my manager, I should have cool metrics to support my work. What say, Mr. Keesara.

Anyways, time for Red Sox-Angels game. Go Sox !!!