Reviews : Java Development Tools You Never Knew Existed :

JiveLint 1.2.1: Code Cleaner

Although the name is strange, this tool is a good one. JiveLint will parse your Java source code and analyze it based on a number of rules. The result is a list of recommendations that will make your code easier to read, less problematic and better performing. JiveLint is a command line tool that will parse through the Java files you specify and determine, line for line, if your code meets a number of pre-defined rules. As a side-note, a couple of independent software providers have integrated JiveLint into their development environments (more information on this is available through the link below).

JiveLint will parse your code and apply 39 different rules (as per v1.2.1). Some of the key rules that it applies include:

• Unused, java.Lang, duplicate and wildcard imports. These are unnecessary.
• Empty catch blocks. These can cause difficult to debug errors.
• Over-general catch exceptions. Same as above.
• No default case in switch statements, won't catch unpredicted run-time cases.
• Mixed indentation, both tabs and spaces used to indent. This can cause unreadable code.
• Unnecessary if statements, extraneous programming.
• Unused local variables, extraneous programming

Customization is somewhat limited, but JiveLint does offer a couple different examples to streamline and enhance your parsing abilities. For starters, JiveLint can be executed in two ways. You can either specify the files you would like to parse(syntax=jivelint-files file1.java file2.java ...etc) or specify a project to parse (syntax = jivelint -projects project1.jnt project2.jnt ...etc). To create a project file, in a text file simply type the full paths to each file in a project separated by a newline character and save it as a .jnt file. Additionally, JiveLint offers you the ability to turn off any of the rules by creating config files. Following their config file syntax, you can specify which rules to disable prior to running JiveLint on your code.

SureShot JiveLint will run on Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. JiveLint is NOT a Java application itself. No additionl recommendations or requirements were provided. JiveLint is available for free and donations are accepted (and recommended by me).

[More Info and download JiveLint]

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