Greetings,
We are pleased to announce not only a new stable release of Hackystat, but the completion
of a major architectural redesign of the system.
Version 7.0.1206 includes the following major enhancements:
* Complete refactoring of system into 63 modules organized into four
subsystems.
* Complete redesign of the build system, with performance, maintainability, and
extensibility improvements.
* Support for evolution in sensor data types.
* New Sensor Data Type: "Code Issue"
* New sensors for: PMD, Emma, FindBugs, Checkstyle, Subversion
* Stable releases and nightly builds are now binary distributions (30 MB rather than 180
MB)
* Improved property file design (hackystat.build.properties and
hackystat.site.properties)
* CCCC sensor now works with standard version of CCCC.
* Hackystat is now Java5 compliant (backward compatible to JDK 1.4.2)
* Hackystat server now compatible with Tomcat 5.5
* Jira sensor works with SSL.
* Hackystat source repository now hosted using Subversion.
* And many more things, as documented in Jira:
<http://hackydev.ics.hawaii.edu:8080/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&pid=10000&fixfor=10060>
Version 7 represents a significant step toward the ultimate goal of this project: the
creation of a robust, extensible, and broadly useful open source platform for software
engineering metrics collection and analysis. Our current direction is greatly influenced
by the vision of "growable" languages articulated by Guy Steele and others. In Hackystat,
this vision manifests itself in 7.0 in several new ways: through the subsystem/module
organization, through the build system that supports both internal and external
enhancement, through evolutionary sensor data types, and through the variety of
"extension points" at various levels of abstraction in the system.
Over the next year or so, we intend to leverage this new architectural platform in
several ways. First, we will provide an integrated, "growable", DocBook-based
documentation system for users, administrators, and developers, which will open up the
design of the system in ways that used to require a visit to Hawaii. (Perhaps some will
view this as a step backwards :-) Second, we will be designing several new "middleware"
abstractions in the system to incorporate learnings over the past several years by our
user community and to provide new common frameworks for improved interoperation among
independently developed sensors and analyses. Third, we will be adding support for (open
source, XML) databases in addition to our current flat-file XML repository, improving the
scalability of Hackystat for larger organizations. Fourth, we will be exploring several
new "frontiers" in software metrics, including: automated workflow modeling; software
development behavior patterns; application of AI techniques such as episode discovery;
new measurement visualization techniques; and empirical investigations of productivity,
test driven design, and software project telemetry. Finally, given the current rapid
growth in our user and developer communities, we intend to begin investigating the
establishment of a "Hackystat Foundation" to help guide its future.
Enough pontificating. Time to get to work on Version 7.1.
The public server running this release is available at:
<http://hackystat.ics.hawaii.edu/>
The developer services site provides downloads and documentation:
<http://www.hackystat.org/>
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Hackystat mailing lists, use the ListServ
web
application at http://listserv.hawaii.edu/.
For more about "growable" languages in general:
<http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/steele-oopsla98.pdf>
And in particular: the Fortress Language:
<http://research.sun.com/projects/plrg/>
Cheers,
Philip
