Free C# metrics calculation library (DLL)

Question

I wanted to ask whether you know about some free C# libraries (dlls) that calculate CK metrics (mainly Cyclomatic Complexity).

I would need that for a project I'm planning to do. I know that there are already some finished solutions that calculate CK metrics and display it to you in various forms, but what I would need is one that I could use from within my application. So before starting and writing one myself I first wanted to ask you.

Thanks

Have you ever found a library? Or how have you solved this problem? — RoflcoptrException, Oct 21 '10 at 21:41
No, this was part of a program idea I had, but unfortunately my current time doesn't allow me to continue and create the app. Therefore I also didn't investigate any further search for an appropriate library — Juri, Oct 22 '10 at 05:46
You want metrics for C# code, or for some other language? Whatever that library does, it will at least have to break the target language text into lexemes. — Ira Baxter, Oct 24 '10 at 10:11
Maybe should you *also* take a look at **ccm** (http://www.blunck.info/ccm.html). — nulltoken, Nov 01 '10 at 13:31

nulltoken · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-27T15:50:28.913

16

DrivenMetrics is a open source C# command line tool. The core functionalities are isolated from the command line console client as a library (Core project is available here).

Even if quite simple, it may fit your need: it's free, counts the the number of lines and calculates the cyclomatic complexity (number of potential code paths) of methods.

This is performed through direct analysis of the IL thanks to Mono.Cecil (the same library NDepend relies on). This allows the analysis to be performed on assemblies built from code written in C#, VB.Net,...

The project has been announced here.
The code source is available on github.
A packaged release is also available.
It works both on Windows and Mono.

UPDATE:

Another option would be the amazing Gendarme, a static analysis tool from the Mono project.

As a sample of usage, the code below display the cyclomatic complexity of every method in an assembly.

ModuleDefinition module = ModuleDefinition.ReadModule(fullPathToTheAssembly);

foreach (var type in module.Types)
{
    foreach (var me in type.Methods)
    {
        if (!me.HasBody || me.IsGeneratedCode() || me.IsCompilerControlled)
            continue;
        var r = AvoidComplexMethodsRule.GetCyclomaticComplexity(me);

        Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", me.ToString(), r);
    }
}

The project is described here
The code source is available on github
Packaged releases are also available
It works both on Windows and Mono

edited Jun 27 '11 at 15:50

answered Oct 23 '10 at 17:03

nulltoken

64,429
20
138
130

Thanks! This looks really great! But where you able to run it? I checked out the core source, build it and then got 3 ddls. Then i referenced this 3 DDLs in my project. But then what to do? I can't see any documentation on this. – RoflcoptrException Oct 31 '10 at 16:08
@Roflcoptr: Take a look at the Driven.Metrics.Tests.Core.Metrics.ILCyclomicComplexityTests class in the DrivenMetrics.Tests projects. This test class will show you how to load an assembly (in the Setup() method), how to select a method to analyze, and how to apply an ILCyclomicComplextityCalculator to it to calculate the CC of the method (see method ShouldDetermineCyclomicComplexityForFooSecond() for instance). – nulltoken Oct 31 '10 at 20:44
sorry i misformed my question i think :D i was wondering how I can use this. I included the file DrivenMetrics.dll in the references of my project. This should do the trikc right? – RoflcoptrException Oct 31 '10 at 23:04
According to the build file (http://www.github.com/garrensmith/DrivenMetrics/blob/master/RakeFile.rb) and the commit history (http://github.com/garrensmith/DrivenMetrics/commit/742f3e6893d71d55c22ad7629820d21c87fe8f87), you'd need those 5 dlls: DrivenMetrics.dll, Mono.Cecil.Extensions.dll, Mono.Cecil.dll, Mono.Cecil.Pdb.dll and Mono.Cecil.Mdb.dll. – nulltoken Nov 01 '10 at 15:28
@Roflcoptr: Garren Smith, the author of the library has just uploaded a packaged release of DrivenMetrics which contains the binaries you need. You can download it at http://github.com/garrensmith/DrivenMetrics/downloads – nulltoken Nov 01 '10 at 19:39
Thanks a lot, now it seems to work. Maybe my problem before was that i failed in programatically creating a dll file from source code.... – RoflcoptrException Nov 01 '10 at 20:01
Thanks a lot for your great advices. Now I was able to calculated the Code of Lines! So i just have to find out how i can generate a dll file programatically ;) – RoflcoptrException Nov 01 '10 at 20:20

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 27 '09 at 08:26

3

I am using SourceMonitor, which is a nice freeware app that measures code complexity and other metrics for a variety of languages including C#. We drive it from the command line to produce XML output, then we use LINQ to XML to extract and sort the data we are interested in. We then use NVelocity to create HTML reports.

I know its not a managed library, but you might find it can do what you need.

answered Jun 27 '09 at 08:26

Mark Heath

48,273
29
137
194

thx for the info. But the problem is that my app is not just considered for personal use, but potentially for others and so it's a bit inconvenient if they have to install it in order to use my app. But I'll take it into consideration, thx – Juri Jun 27 '09 at 09:22

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 23 '13 at 05:22

There is a tool from Microsoft I am using to compute code metrics for C# assemblies.

It includes cyclo complex, maintainability index and more.

Details here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/camerons/archive/2011/01/28/code-metrics-from-the-command-line.aspx

Download here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=9422

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 29 '10 at 02:41

0

It isn't free but I've had good experiences with NCover for this sort of thing. They also integrate pretty well with a lot of CI tools out there.

answered Oct 29 '10 at 02:41

jtruelove

3,306
3
25
29

score -1 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 30 '10 at 16:40

-1

With 82 code metrics supported NDepend is the code metrics Roll's Royce tooling for .NET developers (however it is a commercial tool).

answered Aug 30 '10 at 16:40

Patrick from NDepend team

13,237
6
61
92

Free C# metrics calculation library (DLL)

5 Answers5

Linked