Software and web applications around the world are growing complex day by day. With cut-throat competition and the need for quality in critical applications, maintaining code quality becomes of utmost importance. A poor code does not just affect the maintainability of the code but also impacts its performance in several cases. Let us take a glance at some of the tools best suited to solve this problem.
SonarQube
SonarQube is the most popular code quality and security analysis tool in the market. With the support of the open-source community, Sonarqube presently can analyze and produce outputs for over 25 programming languages, which are higher than most tools in the market. It comes in a free community edition, and other premium paid editions. The primary benefits of utilizing SonarQube are:
Easily integrates into CI/CD pipelines with a single line command. Can be integrated into Maven and Gradle build cycle too Checks for almost everything – code quality, formatting, variable declarations, exception handling, and a lot more
This helps you ensure your code is of expected quality before it is merged! Learn how to review code with SonarQube here.
Visual Assist
Move your code to any method, symbol, reference, or file in your solutions and projects with Visual Assist. It helps you inspect and modernize the older code and perform specific quality checks. It brings The Code Inspection feature for you that is based on LLVM/Clang, which fixes or diagnoses typical programming errors, such as interface issues, bugs, and style violations. You can dig into the issues and repair the cracks with a simple static analysis. Visual Assist helps you reduce the code’s complexity to make it extensible and improve readability without changing the external behavior. You can refactor the code you inherit, the first version of your work, or legacy code easily with Visual Assist. You can correct errors, especially pointer notation and symbol case, and watch Visual Assist do the rest. In addition, build high-performing c++ code for the project you are working on with VA features and behavior. You also get Unreal Engine 4 dev to disable IntelliSense and take advantage of the support. Furthermore, Visual Assist suggests completions while writing a code to save time and fix your queries during the project. Get shortcut keys to open any file, find any symbol, go to implementation or anywhere related to the current symbol, open the corresponding file, find references and quick actions, refactor menu, list methods in the file, and a lot more. VA comes with two licenses. If you are an individual, you can choose the $129 or buy a standard plan at $279 if you are an organization.
DeepScan
DeepScan is excellent at scanning the Javascript code repository. It is able to handle dynamic code quality checks for almost any JavaScript framework. Major benefits of using Deepscan include:
Provides a graphical view of scanning data over time Useful to analyze and keep track of how the code management process has been going Useful for organization-wide code quality audits over a single platform Auto-scans the repositories Works over the cloud and on-premises
It provides you with an excellent dashboard to manage and maintain all your projects and code quality grading in one place. The dashboard is a true blessing to market your quality standard in front of the client.
Klocwork
Klocwork can perform static code analysis on projects of almost any size. The primary benefit of using Klocwork is that it is easily integrable with Visual Studio Code IDE, Eclipse, IntelliJ, and a few others. This makes use of Klocwork easier for developers. Additionally, it can also be integrated into CI/CD pipelines for ensuring code quality before delivery. It supports C, C#, C++, and Java.
CodeSonar
CodeSonar is a statistical code analysis tool that analyses the code from a computational perspective. It is able to develop models from your code, analyze them for potential execution threats like deadlocks, memory overflow, null pointers, data leaks, and numerous such programmatic errors that might be difficult to catch. The developers of CodeSonar claim:
The code scanning done by it is more profound than others. Able to detect 3-5 times more defects compared to other tools It can build a function call graph of its own to analyze the complete code model and provide output about the quality.
CodeSonar provides extensive code understanding capabilities and helps developers identify and fix issues rapidly.
JArchitect
JArchitect is primarily dedicated to code analysis in Java language. JArchitect is the most exhaustive Java code analysis tool that analyses
Call hierarchies Memory consumption Code complexity Functional coupling Block Nesting Depth Architectural flaws in the implementation
JArchitect is used by giants like Samsung, Intel, LG, IBM, Google, and others. This ascertains how far excellent the tool is.
Bandit
Bandit is a Python security vulnerability scanning tool that scans python packages for security flaws. It is a popular tool among data scientists and AI experts for building code that meets organizational standards. Bandit is available for use over a command-line interface. It generates a security vulnerability report with detailed information about the security issue. More Python security scanner is listed here.
Code Climate
Code Climate is an analytics tool that is extremely useful for an organization that emphasizes quality. Code Climate offers two different products:
Velocity – identify logical flaws and bad design patterns within the code. It provides a well-analyzed visualization of code quality and assists in the resolution of the same. Velocity features focus on improving the functional quality of the code. Quality – primarily focuses on code quality in terms of formatting, unused imports, variables, and unit test coverage. It is an automated tool that can automatically process all your pull requests. This ensures quality before the merge.
It supports more than ten languages.
Crucible
Crucible from the house of Atlassian is an interesting collaborative tool for managing code quality. It is unlike the automated quality check tools. Rather, Crucible is a rare tool in the market that provides quality analysis with the facility to collaborate at the same time. Crucible allows integration with popular tools like Jira, Github, Confluence as well as CI/CD tools like Jenkins or AWS CodePipeline. Some of the features of Crucible include the following.
Review and collaborate on the code Auto-trigger code scanning and see the reports in your desired tool Auto-generate tickets in Jira by providing a review Track the complete code review cycle at one place
Fortify Static Code Analyser
Fortify by Micro Focus focus on the scanning of security vulnerabilities in the codebase. It looks towards known security flaws and any presence of malware or corrupted files that might be a problem. Some of the exciting features include:
Automated scanning of code Covers almost every programming language Provides suggestions for resolution of vulnerabilities Provides rich analysis of the code to help you solve issues faster Easy integration with popular CI/CD tools
Codecov
Codecov is a comprehensive tool for managing code base as well as building with a single utility. It analyses the pushed code, performs required checks, and auto-merges them if needed. Some of the more features are listed below.
A single line of command can scan, analyze, generate reports and merge them Integrable with almost every popular CI/CD tools Supports an elaborate list of 30+ programming languages Integrates reports into the Github repository for easier code review
Codacy
Audit your code quality and automate the process with Codacy. It helps you track the technical debt for over 40 programming languages. You will get the access to maintain your own code quality through blocking merges based on your quality rules. Codacy provides all the features that you need, such as high-security standards, code standardization, the improved velocity of the team, tailored needs, and more. Integrate Codacy with your workflow and get notifications where you need to speed up the process. Receive notifications on Slack or as pull request comments and gain full visibility into technical debt and know exactly what to tackle in how much time. Customize your analysis from hundreds of rules that Codacy offers or use its configuration file. Codacy checks performance and security prior to the process to secure your product from vulnerabilities. Define a quality standard and make sure everyone in the team is publishing consistent and healthy code. You can also opt for the self-hosted version to receive the most secure environment and access to stunning features. The price for small teams is $15/user/month if billed yearly, including cloud-hosted repositories and unlimited lines of code. Avail yourself of a 14-day free trial.
Codeac
Find refactoring opportunities, decrease technical debt, and measure the quality of code with Codeac CI tool. You can use any version of the control system of your choice to sign in, including Bitbucket, GitLab, and GitHub. Setup Codeac to know what is happening in the source control in just a few seconds. Identify code duplications, cyclomatic complexity, new static analysis issues easily, and save time on reviews. Track your project every time to improve your code quality over time. It introduces software development cycle time to measure the time taken from the first commit to the production. Codeac is completely configurable and always provides detailed reports. Start managing your code quality from today by analyzing the issues in no time. Get it now at $0 with unlimited public repositories. Pay $21/month/user to get unlimited private repositories. Take a 14-day free trial and dive deeper into the advantages.
SonarCloud
Eliminate vulnerabilities and bugs easily with SonarCloud and quickly improve your code quality. It helps you improve your workflow with code security and continuous code quality so that you can release clean code. It also analyzes branches automatically and decorates every pull request. SonarCloud fixes the issues that compromise your application and catch bugs quickly to prevent unwanted cause that impacts end-user experience. It has great functionality that allows you to access awesome enhancements and features. In addition, it provides clean and transparent dashboards to keep stakeholders and teams on the same page to maintain quality and reliability. You can also display your project badges to show your strength. Share the practices and enjoy writing quality pieces with SonarCloud. You can also connect with Sonarlint to receive notifications in the IDE. It speaks many languages, from Java, C++, Apex, to Ruby and Swift, and supports over 24 languages so that you can relax on code security and quality. Get open-source projects for free with complete access to the features. Start with a paid plan by taking a 14-day free trial to avail more benefits.
Conclusion
Code quality analysis and audits have become an essential process for every organization today. With the increasing use of open-source libraries, security and code quality have become critical to building quality software. Additionally, a better code quality also helps the organization cut down on maintenance and enhancement costs in the future. Thus, these tools will surely come to your rescue when it comes to making quality software.
