I think we should start measuring our rate of change on the
Maintainability Index over time:
It's quite a simple process. For each 'module' of code, we just take:
171 - 5.2 * ln(aveV) - 0.23 * aveV(g') - 16.2 * ln (aveLOC) - 50 * sin (sqrt(2.4 *
perCM))
where
perCM = the average percent of lines of comments per module,
aveLOC = the average count of lines of code per module
aveV(g') = the average extended cyclomatic complexity per module
aveV = the average Halstead Volume V per module.
For anyone not familiar with the latter concepts, the cyclomatic
complexity (CC) is simply calculated as:
CC = E - N + p
Where for a connected graph of the module that shows the topology of
control flow within the program,
E = the number of edges of the graph
N = the number of nodes of the graph
p = the number of connected components
and the Halstead Volume is simply
HV = N * (LOG2 n)
where
N = N1 + N2
n = n1 + n2
where
n1 = the number of distinct operators
n2 = the number of distinct operands
N1 = the total number of operators
N2 = the total number of operands
(This is spelt out in much more detail at
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/activities/str/descriptions/mitmpm.html)
This should be fairly simple to implement (I'll leave that as an exercise
for the reader), and could probably be used as a starting point for
CPANTS.
Tony
--
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Tony Bowden | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.tmtm.com/
I'd rather walk than crawl but my heels are aching
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