Cool Tool - NDepend for automated code metrics

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/cool_tool__ndepend_for_automated_code_metrics.htm]

Given human nature, and all the tedious things that go into coding, the coding standards that survive are usually the ones that you can automate with some external tool.

Code Metrics is one such type of governance. Two of the most popular metrics are line count and cyclomatic complexity. Perhaps the best tool on the market to assist with these (and much more) is NDepend.

For example, say you want to prevent developers from writing huge methods, or huge files. You could use the command line for NDepend to check for method-line-count, and then fail any check-in that doesn't meet this policy - just like you could fail a check-in that doesn't compile or breaks a unit test.

Cyclomatic code complexity is another one - this (to simplify it) measures the number of dependencies. The more dependencies, the harder to instantiate something in a test harness, so this is actually a big deal. You could reduce dependencies by leveraging interfaces and abstract classes, using injections, or the like (whole books are written about this).

This is just the tip of the iceberg. NDepend has dozens of these types of metrics.

Initially I tried to use Visual Studio's "code metrics" feature, but for some reason I cannot fathom, you cannot run it from the command line - which of course makes it useless for an automated build (which is the whole point). At least VS code coverage had undocumented techniques to work around this.

I realize there are open-source options for basic file line count, but I personally haven't come across any that can effectively do the other metrics like method line count and cyclomatic complexity.

Bottom line - if you're trying to enforce automated governance through your build, consider checking out NDepend. Yes, there's a license fee, but if it saves you even 10 hours by preventing issues and bad design, then it's paid for itself. Also, being aware of these types of metrics is the kind of thing that helps take a developer to the next level.

[Disclaimer - I haven't fully implemented this myself yet, it's still in a research phase, and I'm just sharing my findings]