Re: SLOC-wars

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message
news:a8jnnl$95l$1@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu...
>
> For current purposes all we seem to need is a metric that will give us a
> rough feel for how big a chunk of code is.  All we need is -
>
>  o a number that gives the rough metric,
>
Good.

>  o a simple mechanism for acquiring the number,
>
Good.
>  o a "standard" mechanism, so that it will mean approximately the same
>    thing to everyone,
>
Not likely to achieve it across all organizations because what is relavent
is always up for debate. Be consistent within an organization or project for
how that body of code is measured & monitored and you'll be doing good.


>  o to the extent possible, a mechanism that works across languages.
>
Not at all possible. Languages have such hugely varying syntax and semantics
that any attempt to compare one to the other is going to be hopeless.
Whatever comparisons you attempt to make based on the numbers are going to
either be a) meaningless or b) so debatable that you won't ever get anyone
to agree to do anything based on the numbers.


> I'm all for the most sophisticated free system that satisfies the above,
> but I'm not interested in "more sophistication" if I can't get it by
> running a script or typing a simple expression at the prompt.  It's not
> like we're bidding on a project or evaluating employee performance.
>
I once hacked together a program to count Halstead bits for Ada83 code. I
had a lexical analyzer sitting around and the rest was just a matter of
identifying input files and scanning over the tokens. A freebie tool to do
it wouldn't be hard to accomplish if a lexical analyzer for Ada95 is
available. Having one somewhere like AdaPower would create a "reference
standard" that might help in comparison of Ada code bodies. Halstead bits is
at least well defined and less subject to arguments about the relavence of
comments or white space or similar things.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com