Code analysis with IntelliJ IDEA Plugin

The Kalistick platform allows you to analyze the code of your application and points out violations in your source categorized in different domains (Implementation, Structure, Documentation, Duplication, Architecture and Tests). All the results can be consulted on the Cockpit web application.

As a developer, it could be annoying to go back and forth from the browser to the IDE in order to correct violations.To make up for the timeloss, we provide plugins for the main IDE (Integrated Development Environment) : Eclipse, Microsoft Visual Studio, and now IntellliJ IDEA.

It brings to your IDE, features to correct violations easily without going back to the Cockpit. Moreover, it permits you to submit a new analysis with few mouse clicks. Manipulating violations becomes easy as the plugin is fully integrated in IntelliJ IDEA. Once you have filled out the connection information and the project you will work on, you just have to retrieve violations inside your code and correct them.

Create analysis

Before even trying to correct violations, the project needs to be analyzed. To simplify this process, we provide a simple wizard that permits to define what needs to be analyzed: selection of files & directories, exclusion of files and libraries, inclusion of tests & coverage reports as well as VCS (Version Control System, aka SCM) information (used to figure out automatically who has introduced the violation).

If your process use continuous integration, we advise you to use our connectors which are pluggable in multiple CI servers (Jenkins/Hudson, Bamboo, etc …) and let you automatize the analysis submission to the Cockpit. Also tools for Maven and Ant are available.

Retrieve results

After submitting an analysis, a notification popup will inform you when the results are available.  Here, there are two possibilities: retrieve either all violations or only yours. To determine which violations are yours, we analyze the VCS information and link each violation to the last person who has modified the related lines.

A simple use case for retrieving all violations can be the team leader having a look at all violations and assigning them or deactivating some of them. At any time, it is possible to retrieve violations (all or yours). If no new results are available, it simply updates the existing ones by updating last status of each violation.

Correct violations

Kalistick view displays the violations list allowing you to group and/or filter them according to several criteria: domain, rule, severity, assignee, existing/new, unresolved/resolved, activated/deactivated. These characteristics permit you to fine-tune the violations tree. The right panel sums up information for the selected violation and provides some actions, for example mark violation as done, deactivate it or assign it to someone else.

Actions

The toolbar at the top of the violation panel contains actions to operate on the violation:

• mark it as resolved: when a correction is applied on a violation, this changes the violation status so everyone knows it has already been corrected,
• deactivate it: the Cockpit provides features to hide some violations by using masks. Simply put, a mask is defined by a pattern which represents classes to be hidden by the mask, and a rule. More information about masks in our “How-to” How to hide irrelevant results and How to work on legacy code
• assign it: choose the developer who will be in charge to correct the violation.

These actions are also available directly in the editor by right-clicking on a Kalistick marker in the left gutter.

With this plugin, you will have no excuse to avoid violation corrections.

Next steps

If you want to get your hands dirty and try the plugin by yourself, search for Kalistick plugin in Plugins section in the IDEA options or download it from the IntelliJ IDEA plugin repository (further information on documentation page). Feel free to contact support@kalistick.com if you have any question.