Software Metric Framework (1711.06322v1)

Abstract: Many researchers have criticized the field of Software Complexity metrics for the lack of testing, verification, and reproducibility of many metrics and case studies that utilized those metrics. This document describes SMF, a tool that can help address some of these concerns, namely by enabling verification of metrics, reproducibility of experiments, and ease of implementation for new metrics. The tool in question is the Software Metric Framework; an extensible set of scripts, tools, and standards that allow others to implement metrics in a way that allows automated data collection and analysis. Because it is only a prototype, the framework has been limited to the analysis of Java applications that utilize Maven, a build system which greatly simplifies the task of compiling source code.