Code auditing

Weekly report

Posted on by dams

stack of magazineWeekly reportekly

The Weekly report is a special audit report. It sounds weird initially, to get a report per week, yet this is exactly what it does. Each week, a new report is built, based on a selection of different rules. And this is helps a lot with code quality!

A different set every week

Each week, a set of different rules are extracted, based on the Analyze and Suggestions rulesets. This is a pot-pourri of code modernisation and bug squashing, in a short list, with a pinch of randomness to spice it up.

The list is short, so that it is possible to focus on it over one week and finish all issues. This gives times to read those issues, understand and spend a reasonable amount of time fixing them, without making it too large of a task. Usually, reviewing them all is an accessible goal, so you can dive immediately.

And remember, that next week, the list will change.

A set of rules for everyone

Weekly menu
Last Month, Last week, this week, next week

One elegant aspect of the Weekly report is that this selection is the same for everyone. You may be working on your code, updating your codebase, while your friends and colleagues are using the same rules, on their own code base.

So the refactoring focus is the same for everyone, even when the code is not. Which means that, even working separately, it is possible to share and discuss possible solutions, and tips to deal with a specific situation. There is no need to present in details a code situation, or a rule : they are this week’s focus. Time to discuss it and collaborate.

Previous and even future

The Exakat Weekly report also features the previous weeks worth of reviews, and, also, the next one. That way, you can review old classics, or even, get yourself ready for next week. Just be warned : next week selection may change anytime until it is next week!
 

 

 

 

Running the report

The Weekly report is build with the following commands :

php exakat.phar init -p my-project -R $URL
php exakat.phar project -p my-project
php exakat.phar report -p my-project --format Weekly

Then, the weekly report is available in the projects/my-projects/weeklyreport. Open it with an HTML browser.

If you have already run an audit, you can skip the first two steps.

Installation instructions are in the manual. When you adapt the configuration of the audit, make sure that Analyze and Suggestions are run.

See you there

The Weekly report is used to review Exakat itself, a bit every week. You can join the PHPNL #exakat channel, and discuss it.