TSSJS 2009: Every Day Static Code Analysis
Speaker: Václav Pech, JetBrains (makers of the IntelliJ IDEA IDE)
Václav begins by citing author of findBugs tool bug categories.
He goes on to presents some nice examples of each of these bug types. Then shows Intellij plugin for static code analysis with on both demand and on-the-fly analysis (very comfortable for the developer).
Adding bug detection to the tool means specifing an undesirable pattern in the program’s AST. Speaker demonstrates creation of a new rule using „PMD rule designer“.
After naming three of the most popular tools (findBugs, CheckStyle, PMD), Václav demonstrates the use of these tools in NetBeans. The SQE plugin integrates the above tools into a unified view. Nice.
Then, just to prove he’s not all about IntelliJ, he shows FindBugs and PMD in Eclipse.
Now back to IDEA again: We see a powerful code analysis and quick-fix tools in IDEA, as well as the ability to define new tools.
Next up: New JetBrains language-aware annotations, which can also provide language-specific code completion in cases where SQL, CSS or any variety of languages are held in a Java string. Very nice, although limited to Strings as opposed to derivations of CharSequence (StringBuffer, StringBuilder).
Václav’s slides are available here.
Summary: This talk presented a useful overview of static cod analysis tools. A sales pitch for IntelliJ? To some extent, perhaps. But having used NetBeans, Eclipse AND IntelliJ in the past twelve months, I can testify to IDEA’s superior support wen it comes to code analysis (as well as other things.) And no, I am not being paid to write this.
