Customizing the assessment

The SQAaaS platform executes multiple checks for assessing each criterion and associated subcriteria. According to the given criterion, the check might consist on ensuring the presence of a set of files (e.g. licenses or code of conduct for the documentation criterion), analysing their content (for licenses or metadata for code) or running static/dynamic analysis tools according to the programming language in use. Check out the current list of tools supported in the SQAaaS platform.

Customizing the behavior of tools: linting and styling

Full compliance with style rules, and in some particular circumstances, with those related to linting aspects should not be enforced when assessing the quality of the code. Legacy or code that has been developed over a extended period of time cannot be easily adapted to new quality standards or trends. As a result, the SQAaaS allows passing exceptions to the default rules through the use of configuration files (as long as the tool supports them).

Throughout this section we summarize how to alter the default behavior of the standards used by the tools supported in the SQAaaS platform. It is important to stress that the configuration file/s must exist in the version of the code repository that we are assessing through the SQAaaS, and placed in the location expected by the tool.

flake8 (Python)

flake8 allows 3 different locations for the configuration files. Either way, you need to have a [flake8] section where you will add your exceptions. An example that excludes a set of rules and defines a maximum line length of 120, would be:

[flake8]extend-ignore = E402, F841, F821, E722max-line-length = 120

checkstyle (Java)

checkstyle is currently supported as a Maven's plugin. Following the documentation, the Sun code style is the one used by default. Based on the Maven's goal checkstyle:check, you can define your own rules by passing the configLocation parameter, such as in:

<plugin>    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>    <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>    <version>3.2.2</version>    <configuration>        <configLocation>checkstyle.xml</configLocation>    </configuration></plugin>

Note that your checkstyle's plugin version might be different from the one used in this example. The configLocation points to a file named checkstyle.xml and this is where all modifications shall be added. For instance, if we would like to increase Sun's default line length to 120 chars (by default is 80), we would modify Sun's rules (assuming they have been already added in checkstyle.xml) as follows:

<module name="LineLength">    <property name="max" value="120"/></module>