rust-code-analysis

rust-code-analysis is a Rust library to analyze and extract information from source codes written in many different programming languages. It is based on a parser generator tool and an incremental parsing library called Tree Sitter.

You can find the source code of this software on GitHub, while issues and feature requests can be posted on the respective GitHub Issue Tracker.

Supported platforms

rust-code-analysis can run on the most common platforms: Linux, macOS, and Windows.

On our GitHub Release Page you can find the Linux and Windows binaries already compiled and packed for you.

API docs

If you prefer to use rust-code-analysis as a crate, you can find the API docs generated by Rustdoc here.

License

All the source code of rust-code-analysis is released under the Mozilla Public License v2.0.

Supported Languages

This is the list of programming languages parsed by rust-code-analysis.

  • C++
  • C#
  • CSS
  • Go
  • HTML
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • The JavaScript used in Firefox internal
  • Python
  • Rust
  • Typescript

Supported Metrics

rust-code-analysis implements a series of metrics

  • CC: it calculates the code complexity examining the control flow of a program.
  • SLOC: it counts the number of lines in a source file.
  • PLOC: it counts the number of physical lines (instructions) contained in a source file.
  • LLOC: it counts the number of logical lines (statements) contained in a source file.
  • CLOC: it counts the number of comments in a source file.
  • BLANK: it counts the number of blank lines in a source file.
  • HALSTEAD: it is a suite that provides a series of information, such as the effort required to maintain the analyzed code, the size in bits to store the program, the difficulty to understand the code, an estimate of the number of bugs present in the codebase, and an estimate of the time needed to implement the software.
  • MI: it is a suite that allows to evaluate the maintainability of a software.
  • NOM: it counts the number of functions and closures in a file/trait/class.
  • NEXITS: it counts the number of possible exit points from a method/function.
  • NARGS: it counts the number of arguments of a function/method.

The metrics above are still NOT implemented for C#, CSS, Go, HTML, and Java languages.

Commands

With the term command, we define any procedure used by rust-code-analysis-cli to extract information from source codes. At each command may be associated parameters depending on the task it needs to carry out. In this page we have grouped the principal types of commands implemented in rust-code-analysis-cli.

Metrics

Metrics are a series of measures that can be used to:

  • Compare different programming languages
  • Provide information on the quality of a code
  • Tell developers where their code is more tough to handle
  • Discover errors earlier

rust-code-analysis calculates the metrics starting from the source code of a program. These kind of metrics are called static metrics.

Nodes

To represent the structure of program code, rust-code-analysis-cli builds an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST). A node is an element of this tree and denotes any syntactic construct present in a language.

Nodes can be used to:

  • Create the syntactic structure of a source file
  • Discover if a construct of a language is present in the analyzed code
  • Count the number of constructs of a certain kind
  • Detect errors i the source code

REST API

rust-code-analysis-cli can be run as a server which accepts requests sent through REST API. The server receives in input the filename of a source code file and returns the relative metrics formatted as a json file.

Metrics

Metrics can be printed on screen or exported as different output formats through rust-code-analysis-cli.

Print metrics

For each function space, rust-code-analysis computes the list of metrics described above. At the end of this process, rust-code-analysis-cli dumps the result formatted in a certain way on the screen. The command used to print the metrics is the following one:

rust-code-analysis-cli -m -p /path/to/your/file/or/directory

The -p option represents the path to a file or a directory. If a directory is passed as input, rust-code-analysis-cli computes the metrics for each file contained in it.

Export formats

Different output formats can be used to export metrics:

  • Cbor
  • Json
  • Toml
  • Yaml

Json and Toml can also be exported pretty-printed.

Export command

For example, if you want to export metrics as a json file, run:

rust-code-analysis-cli -m -O json -o /output/path -p /path/to/your/file/or/directory

The -O option allows you to choose the output format. It supports only these values: cbor, json, toml, yaml.

The -o option is used to specify the path where your file will be saved. It accepts only paths. The filename of your output file is the same as your input file plus the extension associated to the format. When this option is not given, the output is printed on shell.

As we said before, Json and Toml can be exported as pretty-printed. To do so, the --pr option is used. In the case below, the pretty-printed json output will be printed on shell:

rust-code-analysis-cli -m -O json --pr -p /path/to/your/file/or/directory

Nodes

rust-code-analysis-cli allows to extract some information from the nodes which compose the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) of a source code.

Find Errors

To know if there are some syntactic errors in your code, run:

rust-code-analysis-cli -p /path/to/your/file/or/directory -I "*.ext" -f -error

The -p option represents the path to a file or a directory. If a directory is passed as input, rust-code-analysis-cli computes the metrics for each file contained in it. The -I option is a glob filter used to consider only the files written in the language defined by the extension of the file. The -f option instead searches all nodes of a certain type. In the case above, we are looking for all the erroneous nodes present in the code.

Count Errors

It is also possible to count the number of nodes of a certain type using the --count option:

rust-code-analysis-cli -p /path/to/your/file/or/directory -I "*.ext" --count -error

Print AST

If you want to print the AST of a source code, run the following command:

rust-code-analysis-cli -p /path/to/your/file/or/directory -d

The -d option prints the entire AST on the shell.

Code Splitting

Commands can be run on a single portion of the code using the --ls and --le options. The former represents the starting line of the code to be considered, while the latter its ending line. For example, if we want to print the AST of a single function which starts at line 5 and ends at line 10, we need to launch this command:

rust-code-analysis-cli -p /path/to/your/file/or/directory -d --ls 5 --le 10

Rest API

It is possible to run rust-code-analysis-cli as a HTTP service using REST API to share data between client and server. We will use the port 9090 to show you the possible ways to interact with the server.

Server

rust-code-analysis-cli can act as a server running on your localhost at a specific port.

rust-code-analysis-cli --serve --port 9090

The --port option sets the port used by the server. One possible value could be 9090.

Ping

If you want to ping the server, make a GET request at this URL:

http://127.0.0.1:9090/ping

Metrics

To get metrics formatted as a json file, make a POST request at this URL:

http://127.0.0.1:9090/metrics?file_name={filename}&unit={unit}

The filename parameter represents the path to the source file to be analyzed, while unit is a boolean value that can assume only 0 or 1. The latter tells rust-code-analysis-cli to consider only top-level metrics, while the former returns detailed metrics for all classes, functions, nested functions, and other sub-spaces.

Developers Guide

If you want to contribute to the development of rust-code-analysis we have summarized here a series of guidelines that are supposed to help you in your building process.

As prerequisite, you need to install the last available version of Rust. You can learn how to do that here.

Clone Repository

First of all, you need to clone the repository and all of its submodules. You can do that:

through HTTPS

git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/mozilla/rust-code-analysis.git

or through SSH

git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 git@github.com:mozilla/rust-code-analysis.git

Building

To build the rust-code-analysis library, you need to run the following command:

cargo build

If you are also interested in the cli tool:

cargo build --all

Testing

After you have finished changing the code, you should always verify whether all tests pass with the cargo test command.

cargo test --all --all-features --verbose

Code Formatting

If all previous steps went well, and you want to make a pull request to integrate your invaluable help in the codebase, the last step left is code formatting.

Rustfmt

This tool formats your code according to Rust style guidelines.

To install:

rustup component add rustfmt

To format the code:

cargo fmt

Clippy

This tool helps developers to write better code catching automatically lots of common mistakes for them. It detects in your code a series of errors and warnings that must be fixed before making a pull request.

To install:

rustup component add clippy

To detect errors and warnings:

cargo clippy --all-targets --all --

Code Documentation

If you have documented your code, to generate the final documentation, run this command:

cargo doc --open --no-deps

Remove the --no-deps option if you also want to build the documentation of each dependency used by rust-code-analysis.

Run your code

You can run rust-code-analysis-cli using:

cargo run -- [rust-code-analysis-cli-parameters]

To know the list of rust-code-analysis-cli parameters, run:

cargo run -p rust-code-analysis-cli -- --help

Practical advice

  • When you add a new feature, add at least one unit or integration test to verify that everything works correctly
  • Document public API
  • Do not add dead code
  • Comment intricate code such that others can comprehend what you have accomplished