Alternate Title: A developer adds five lines to her. You won't believe what happens next! Code quality is critical to keeping large projects healthy and progressing, but it's hard to maintain consistent quality by hand.
However, there are a bunch of tools for Python code that will make this so much easier. Like several other topics in software development, what tools to use comes down to preference. Do you use a tool not on this list? Feel free to let me know what I am missing! What follows is my personal preference in tools as of Python has a built in unit testing toolkit in the unittest module, but it's not always the right fit for every project.
I prefer using Pytest whenever possible because the experience is so simple. When it's easier to write unit tests, you'll write more of them. Pytest makes it a breeze to create new tests. Just add a new Python file that starts with test , write a few functions, and you're already done. There are a massive amount of plugins for Pytest that can be configured through a pytest. It's also easy and painless to write your own plugins too!
And of course, Pytest "just works" with class based tests from unittest , too. Say you were writing a test to see if addition works, and in this alternate universe it also didn't bother you this exercise seemed so contrived. You might write a pytest file like this in a tests directory:. You would also write up a pytest. That's all it takes to create new Pytest tests. You can run them by installing Pytest from PyPi and running the pytest command. You might also need tests for your non-functional requirements like performance, security, or resiliency.
Each of these have their own particular philosophy, requiring different considerations and approaches. Just writing these tests is hard, but finding the right level of testing, while writing good tests is an art! Of course, they come with their own frameworks, patterns, and tools to make sure you are never bored. The team needs to agree how they will write code, which principles, patterns, processes, and even styles everyone should follow.
Your source control tool becomes way more than a code repository, sitting at the center of team and allowing them to work in parallel on multiple features. Code reviews , these days often in the form of Pull Requests PRs are critical. They are one of the best ways of catching deviations from the agreed approaches, bugs, and simply learning from each other. Finally, static code analysis tools ensure a consistent style across the entire code base and end endless discussions primarily based on personal preference like spacing or usage of brackets in single line ifs.
You would also like that code to be available as soon as possible in User Acceptance Testing UAT or Production so the bigger feedback loop and acceptance of the code can begin. You should be able to push your code, test it, and deploy to any environments you require, and this process should be as short as possible. There is no shortage of tools and options in this area either, which depending on the company might get deep into Devops territory.
And when that happens, you want to have the right tools and information available so you can trace and fix the issue as soon as possible. This is why you want to master your debuggers, have different profiles in your toolbelt for different purposes CPU, memory usage, network, database, etc.
You want to see good code there, easy to understand and fix, covered by tests that give you decent confidence that nothing else was broken by the change. Maybe you are part of a very small team might be just you , or maybe you work for an old-school company where most of the previous concepts are buzzwords at most. For example, join meetups in your area, local development groups, get involved with Open Source Software OSS , try to help or just ask questions in Stackoverflow, follow online tutorials, courses and videos, read blogs, etc.
Some are official tools provided by Microsoft, others are open source offerings, while others are commercial tools requiring an extra investment. It then makes sense to start the tools discussion going through the tools included in Visual Studio.
Bear in mind these might be available or not depending on your version of Visual Studio, check the comparison page for more information. If you are interested, check this article on the DNC magazine describing some of these tools. If you are interested in. Net Core, bear in mind some tools like Code Metrics might not support it yet. As you can see, there is no shortage of tools out-of-the-box, with many included in every edition of Visual Studio.
I will start this section by mentioning alternatives to Visual Studio as IDE, although if you are targeting the full. Net framework, this is your best choice. You might have already discovered Visual Studio Code , which works great as a lightweight editor for. Net Core applications. Check this introductory article in the DNC magazine. A more fully-featured IDE supporting not just.
Net Core but also the full. Net framework is the promising Rider from JetBrains, available as preview and due to release this year. These typically contain static code analysis, integration with test runners and code coverage tools and some form of reporting or dashboards that collects and presents all this information:.
Another category of tools are the profilers, which can be of major help when diagnosing certain issues like performance bottlenecks or memory leaks.
This lengthy list of tools represents a breadth of open source and commercial offerings in the. Net landscape. Pick any area, dig online and you will find many specialized tools both commercial and open source which might be worth investigating. In the near future, we will covering up some commercial tools that help ensure Code quality and gauge the overall health of your.
NET application. NDepend combines the capabilities of multiple tools with the sole aim of helping you avoiding mistakes and code smells, write better code, and get a clear picture of the current quality of your code base as well as the trend. A set of rules can be defined and enforced based on that data using a LINQ-like syntax.
This LINQ syntax can also be used to explore your code and is the basis of the many different visualizations provided by the tool. It integrates with external tools like reflectors, code coverage, and Continuous Integration servers means you can define your Quality Gates and prevent bad code from being committed and your code base from deteriorate.
There is much more to it, so if it sounds interesting I will invite you to read the follow-up article to be published soon on this website which will be focused on its new version. Update: The NDepend article has been published at www.
Every good coding practice, pattern, principle, and tool mentioned through the article for improving code quality, is valuable. Whether they are the right ones for your team or project is something you need to decide for yourself.
Be agile with your coding practices and patterns. Decide within your team what makes most sense now. Once agreed, commit yourselves to try for a reasonable period after which you will re-evaluate. As for the tools, you should be able to try most if not all of them before you commit to any extra investment. Download them, try them, and strictly evaluate their usefulness to your team or project. Thanks to Craig Berntson for technically reviewing this article. This article has been editorially reviewed by Suprotim Agarwal.
C and. Organized around concepts, this Book aims to provide a concise, yet solid foundation in C and. Your feedback should be constructive enough to encourage the developer to understand your perspective and initiate a conversation when necessary.
It is easy for code reviews to get stuck in limbo, leading to being less efficient and even counter-productive. The code review process is critical because it is never a part of the formal curriculum in schools. You may learn the nuances of a programming language and project management , but code review is a process that evolves as an organization ages.
As a senior developer typically conducts a code review, a junior developer may use this feedback to improve their own coding.
It is the easiest approach to code reviews and does not require a pre-defined structure. Such a code review may still be done informally today, along with a formal code review process that may be in place. Over-the-shoulder code reviews were traditionally done in person, while distributed teams can follow this method through collaborative tools as well.
While over-the-shoulder code reviews are a great way to review new code, geographically distributed teams have traditionally relied on email for code reviews. In this code review process, a developer emails a diff of changes to the whole development team, usually through version control systems that automate notifications.
This email initiates a conversation on the changes, where team members may request further changes, point out errors, or ask for clarifications. In the early days, email was the primary means of communication because of Its versatility Open source organizations often maintained a public mailing list, which would also serve as a medium to discuss and provide feedback on code.
With the advent of code review tools, these mailing lists still exist, but primarily for announcements and discussion onward. Pair programming is a continuous code review process. Two developers sit at a workstation, but only one of them actively codes whereas the other provides real-time feedback. While it may serve as a great tool to inspect new code and train developers, it could potentially prove to be inefficient due to its time-consuming nature. This process locks down the reviewer from doing any other productive work during the period.
A tool-assisted code review process involves the use of a specialized tool to facilitate the process of code review. A tool generally helps you with the following tasks:.
While these are the broad requirements of a code review tool, modern tools may provide a handful of other functions. The main outcome of a code review process is to increase efficiency. A code review tool automates the process of code review so that a reviewer solely focuses on the code. A code review tool integrates with your development cycle to initiate a code review before new code is merged into the main codebase.
You can choose a tool that is compatible with your technology stack to seamlessly integrate it into your workflow. For instance, if you use Git for code management , TravisCI for continuous integration, ensure that you select a tool that supports these technologies to be able to fit into the development process.
Dynamic analysis involves checking if the code follows a set of rules and running unit tests, typically performed by a predefined script. Static code testing is done after a developer creates a new code to be merged into the current code.
Review Board is a web-based, open source tool for code review. To test this code review tool, you can either explore the demo on their website or download and set up the software on your server. You can also link Review Board to Amazon S3 for storing screenshots directly in the tool. Review Board lets you perform both pre-commit and post-commit code reviews depending on your requirements. A graphical comparison of changes in your code is also provided. In addition to code reviews, Review Board lets you conduct document reviews too.
Therefore, the community for Review Board has grown over the years and you will likely find support if you have any issues using the tool. Review Board is a simple tool for code reviews, which you can host on your server. You should give it a try if you do not wish to host your code on a public website.
Crucible is a collaborative code review tool by Atlassian. It is a commercial suite of tools that allows you to review code, discuss plans changes, and identify bugs across a host of version control systems. Crucible provides two payment plans, one for small teams and while the other for enterprises. Its primary function is to enable you to perform code reviews. It allows you to perform pre-commit reviews and audits on merged code. If you use GitHub to maintain your Git repositories on the cloud, you may have already used forks and pull requests to review code.
GitHub has an inbuilt code review tool in its pull requests. GitHub allows a reviewer with access to the code repository to assign themselves to the pull request and complete a review. A developer who has submitted the pull request may also request a review from an administrator. In addition to the discussion on the overall pull request, you are able to analyze the diff, comment inline, and check the history of changes.
The code review tool also allows you to resolve simple Git conflicts through the web interface. GitHub even allows you to integrate with additional review tools through its marketplace to create a more robust process. The GitHub code review tool is a great tool if you are already on the platform. It does not require any additional installation or configuration. The primary issue with the GitHub code review tool is that it supports only Git repositories hosted on GitHub. If you are looking for a similar code review tool that you can download and host on your server, you can try GitLab.
Phabricator is a list of open source tools by Phacility that assist you in reviewing code.
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