Introduction to Hackystat Framework

I was able to successfully complete all tasks in regards to introducing myself to a software engineering measurement collection and analysis (through Hackystat). I read through the relevant tutorials and documentation, successfully installed the Eclipse sensor and Ant sensor, and was able to send data to my public Hackystat server account using the example system StackyHack.

Overall, it took me about 3 hours to read through the documentation, install the system, and troubleshoot. There are numerous tours, tutorials, and user guides that are provided with Hackystat. The documentation provides a solid introduction and foundation from which a user can learn about and get a feel for the Hackystat framework. Because of all the documentation, it took me about 2 hours to go through all the various parts. Installing the system was actually relatively simple consisting of just unzipping archives, creating environment variables, and moving files to appropriate directories. This portion did not take more than 20 minutes. I did have to spend about 40 minutes to troubleshoot my Hackystat connection to the server. The connection worked perfectly with Eclipse, but Ant proved to be a little more difficult. Turns out that you can't put the quotes for the ANT_ARGS environment variable that are shown in the documentation . Also, I had the sensorshell.properties in the wrong directory which did not help matters. Other than those general issues of familiarizing myself with a new framework/system (terminology, following setup instructions, etc.), those were the only issues that I encountered.

Somewhat ironically, Hackystat will help me to develop additional sensors for it. The reason I say that is because it will help track my software development process, so that my teammate and I can determine whether our development process is following a healthy trend (when viewed through the telemetry viewer). If our development process is following a healthy trend, then we can continue following our current procedures and processes. However, if the trend is not healthy, then adjustments will need to be made otherwise our sensors will most likely not be any good because our development process is flawed (too little coverage, too many code issues, too few commits, etc.).

All in all, Hackystat seems to be a good example of the three prime directives for open source software engineering:

1. The system successfully accomplishes a useful task.
2. An external user can successfully install and use the system.
3. An external developer can successfully understand and enhance the system.

It satisfies prime directive #1 because the system provides useful metrics on software engineering processes which is extremely helpful and useful to software developers. It satisfies prime directive #2 because I (who for the most part am an external user) have just successfully installed and used the system. Lastly, it satisfies prime directive #3 because you can join the project, check out the subversion repository and work to improve the current features, or in the case of myself, add new sensors to the framework.

After formally introducing myself to Hackystat, I look forward to the opportunity I have to improve the framework (by adding new sensors) and to utilize its abilities/metrics to improve my own software development process.