Chapter 4. Getting Started With the Squore Eclipse Plugin

Once the Squore Eclipse Plugin is installed in Eclipse, obtaining a Java project rating is rather straightforward.

First locate the contextual menu entry for the Java project you want to rate. This menu is only available on Java Projects.

Contextual menu on a Java project

Expanding this menu will offer you rating actions and display options.

Rating (or "building") a project with Squore Eclipse Plugin can either be performed as a baseline build or a draft build.

Rating actions

When choosing baseline build, the project rating will produce a new reference version, with which all subsequent ratings will be compared to. This will affect rating computations based on metrics previous values, as well as all trends displayed in the Squore Eclipse Plugin views.
The baseline mode is useful when a stable state of the project has been reached, and a development phase is about to begin.
When choosing draft build, the project is rated as usual, but the reference version is not modified. Multiple draft builds will always compare to the last defined baseline.
The draft mode is useful during a development phase, when the project can undergo several back and forth changes, and the user wants to keep comparing the current version to the last stable one.

The "Show" sub-menu will allow selection of several views providing rating-related information. Each one of these views displays data for the project artefact currently selected.

Display options

The Squore Card view displays the overall rating for the current artefact, and its trend. It also lists the tables of interests for this artefact, as defined in the Analysis Model used to rate the project.
Rating card
Full Rating card
The Findings view lists the Findings for the current artefact as well as underlying artefacts, with their location and definition details. This list can be sorted, and allows navigation to artefacts associated to each finding by double-clicking on their name.
A finding and its location in the source code
A finding full description
The Action Items view works much like the Findings one, except it lists the Action Items computed by the Decision Model, and the reason why they have been generated.
Action Items
The Highlights view works much like the Findings one, except it provides a list of the current project's Files, Classes or Functions, sorted by decreasing rating. Selecting the type of object to sort (File, Class or Function) is performed through the top-left menu icons.
Highlights

Activating and anchoring these views to the workspace will enhance the project with global rating data, as well as useful information to help understand and ameliorate that rating.

Main view

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