Killer tool: Sonar

Today a colleague at work showed Sonar to me, and I must say that I was really impressed! Sonar is an open source code quality analysis tool that uses a number of popular Java code analyzers like PMD, CheckStyle, FindBugs and Cobertura under the hood, and presents the metrics calculated by all of these in a consistent and integrated way. It also keeps track of all the metrics data in a database so you can see how your code quality evolves.

One part of Sonar is a Web front-end for the metrics database, and the other part is a Maven plugin that runs all code analyzers and pumps the collected data into that database. (As an aside: imagine how much harder it would be to develop a tool like this if there wasn't a dominant build solution in the Java space like Maven.)

As a package Sonar just ticks all the right boxes. It's really easy to get up and running (starting its DB/Web server and running mvn clean install sonar:sonar in your Maven project is all there is to it), feels absolutely solid, has a friendly UI and looks very polished overall.

Warmly recommended!