Hello Lukas,

Am 2008-05-22 um 21:39 schrieb Lukas Renggli:

>>  SwaLint features a plug-in oriented model to provide its so  
>> called test.
>>  It provides an API to enable a developer to include his own tests  
>> more
>> easily
>>  than with SmallLint.
>
> SmallLint is plug-in based as well. Have a look at Slime [1], this is
> an extension to SmallLint that detects Seaside specific defects and
> code smells.

When we started developing SwaLint, we considered to incorporate our
ideas into SmallLint. Given the requirements we had[1], we evaluated the
plug-in architecture provided by SmallLint. From our point of view,  
it has not
fit our needs; it has not provided the kind of API we wanted to code  
plug-ins
with.

>
>>  it. Additionally, a metrics based plug-in is included, which  
>> currenly
>> should decect god
>>  classes and data classes.
>
> The Disharmonies are interesting, but could be trivially added as a
> SmallLint plugin.

So, how do you reuse results from other SmallLint tests?
That was one of our most important goals. Within SwaLint, one is able
to use results from other test (and plug-ins, as well) to generate one’s
own results.
    At the moment, we provide Boolean, Integer, Percentage, and
Uniformity results. These results may have thresholds, so you can  
‘ask’, e. g.
whether the ATFD (access to foreign data, a class metric) for the  
class your
test is currently processing is greater than ‘high’.

>
>>  Besides, we tried to make SwaLint to be more usable than  
>> SmallLint is.
>
> Many years ago i've integrated SmallLint into SUnit [2], so that Lint
> rules can be run as part of the unit tests. I've added pragmas to
> ignore certain rules at specific places.

That seems to be a nice idea to avoid test results which are really  
expected
and intended.

> This is all done in an
> ad-hock matter, but I think this is nice way to go without requiring
> new tools.
>
> Why do you think SmallLint is not useable?

First of all, we don’t want to argue that SmallLint were a bad tool.  
Actually, we
believe that it is a great programming aid facility for a developer.  
But using it showed
that there are several problems.
    One example would be the UI. What we wanted to say is that using  
the supplied Tool
window can be very confusing. I. e., you don’t have an overview of  
the subjects under
test and the tests selected at the same time. When you do multiple  
testing passes,  you
do not know, which results belong to which testing session and which  
were the tests run.
When viewing the results, looking at “…description of the test…[3]”  
does not provide a
clear overview of which subjects are affected. We tried to address  
these issues by providing
a consistent UI as well as a clear connection of test and subject. We  
even incorporated some
highlighting for the convenience of the tester.
    We encountered a problem concerning several SmallLint rules.  
These rules simply
failed in the sense of that a debugger popped up.  Sadly, all other  
test results were gone
then. SwaLint provides the possibility to run the complete test and  
afterwards inspect the
errors occured. SwaLint will not crash because of a plug-in crashing  
(given you don’t do
the “true become: false” sort of things).
    As SwaLint proxies all SmallLint rules, we included some default  
preferences that disable
most of the SmallLint rules known to often produce errors in our  
environment.
    As mentioned, every test in SwaLint can have its own preferences.  
This is extremely usefull
for the metrics, because this way we are able to provide customized  
thresholds persistently.

> How do you do the scoping?

What do you mean by scoping?
Do you mean the differed kinds of test subjects supported?

Interested in your answer and with kind regards,
	-Tobias on behalf of the SwaLint team

[1] Actually, this project started as an assignment for the
software engineering course the team attended recently.
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