Being able to get actionable output and issue details out of JET

[goudrob83]

Hello,

We from TIOBE software have developed a Code Quality framework in which many different Code Quality Metrics are being measured. As of recent we have added Julia support to our framework to measure some Code Quality Metrics for this new technology too.

On our customer request we are checking whether JET.jl tool qualifies as a proper Code Quality tool that can be integrated into our framework. We are aiming to have the tool used for the "Coding Standard" metric, as it's a tool that is able to inform the engineer on specific bad coding practices or code smells. Also we are considering whether the tool could be used for our "Abstract Interpretation" metric, representing issues that are found by performing "Deep Flow Analysis"

Together with Julia expert we tried to use your tool to get the right information out of it, but we are unable to do so. We would like to know about the following aspects. If some aspect is not covered, please consider this a Change Request to your tool:

1. Can the JET tool be run on a single Julia file and only get issues found/originating in that file? Or is the tool only working on a Julia project level?
2. We would like to get per issue at least the following information:

• File name where the issue is found
• Line number where the issue is found
• Violation message
• Which JET check triggered this issue

3. The information is to be returned in a parseable output
4. We want to run from the command line, outside of Julia context. Perhaps you can create a Julia file that checks all prerequisites and installs all prerequisites if not available, then run the tool provided the project (or file) and then return the violation information.
5. Is there a way to get from the tool the set of checks supported by the tool
6. What kind of checks could be considered "Abstract Interpretation" checks? And which are more local "Coding Standard" checks?

Please feel free to reach out to me on rob.goud@tiobe.com

Thanks,
Rob