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  1. Stackups
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  3. Code Review
  4. Code Review
  5. Checkstyle vs RuboCop

Checkstyle vs RuboCop

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

RuboCop
RuboCop
Stacks1.4K
Followers222
Votes41
Checkstyle
Checkstyle
Stacks132
Followers107
Votes0
GitHub Stars8.7K
Forks3.9K

Checkstyle vs RuboCop: What are the differences?

# Introduction
This comparison highlights the key differences between Checkstyle and RuboCop in terms of their functionalities and usage in coding practices.

1. **Supported Languages**: Checkstyle is primarily used for Java code review, enforcing a specific coding standard, whereas RuboCop is designed for Ruby code and focuses on enforcing the community Ruby style guide.
2. **Rules Configuration**: Checkstyle allows users to create custom rules and configure existing ones through XML configuration files, offering a high level of customization. On the other hand, RuboCop provides a predefined set of rules based on the Ruby style guide, limiting customization options.
3. **Integration with IDEs**: Checkstyle integrates smoothly with popular IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse, providing real-time feedback during coding. In contrast, RuboCop's integration with IDEs may require additional plugins or setup, making real-time validation less accessible.
4. **Community Support**: RuboCop has a larger and more active community compared to Checkstyle, resulting in frequent updates, bug fixes, and improvements to the tool. Checkstyle, while well-established, may have less frequent updates and community engagement.
5. **Focus Areas**: Checkstyle emphasizes code structure, naming conventions, and formatting rules, whereas RuboCop places a strong emphasis on code readability, maintainability, and adherence to Ruby best practices.
6. **Ease of Configuration**: Checkstyle's configuration process can be complex due to the extensive set of rules and customization options available, requiring a deeper understanding of the tool. RuboCop, with its opinionated nature and predefined rules, offers a simpler and more straightforward configuration process for users.

In Summary, Checkstyle and RuboCop differ in supported languages, rules configuration, integration with IDEs, community support, focus areas, and ease of configuration, catering to distinct coding needs and preferences in Java and Ruby development environments.

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Advice on RuboCop, Checkstyle

Weverton
Weverton

CTO at SourceLevel

Aug 10, 2020

Review

To communicate isn’t just getting rid of syntax errors and making code work. The code should communicate ideas to people through a programming language that computers can also understand.

You should adopt semantic variables, classes, modules, and methods names. For instance, in Ruby, we avoid using particular prefixes such as is_paid, get_name and set_name. In their places, we use directly paid?, name, and name=.

My advice is to use idiomatic and features that the programming language you use offers to you whenever possible, and figure out ways to better pass the message.

Why wouldn’t we be worried about semantics, typos, and styles? We should care for the quality of our code, and the many concepts that define it. You can start by using a #linter to collect some issues from your codebase automatically.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

RuboCop
RuboCop
Checkstyle
Checkstyle

RuboCop is a Ruby static code analyzer. Out of the box it will enforce many of the guidelines outlined in the community Ruby Style Guide.

It is a development tool to help programmers write Java code that adheres to a coding standard. It automates the process of checking Java code to spare humans of this boring (but important) task. This makes it ideal for projects that want to enforce a coding standard.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
8.7K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
3.9K
Stacks
1.4K
Stacks
132
Followers
222
Followers
107
Votes
41
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 9
    Open-source
  • 8
    Completely free
  • 7
    Runs Offline
  • 4
    Customizable
  • 4
    Follows the Ruby Style Guide by default
No community feedback yet
Integrations
Ruby
Ruby
IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ IDEA
Java
Java

What are some alternatives to RuboCop, Checkstyle ?

Code Climate

Code Climate

After each Git push, Code Climate analyzes your code for complexity, duplication, and common smells to determine changes in quality and surface technical debt hotspots.

Codacy

Codacy

Codacy automates code reviews and monitors code quality on every commit and pull request on more than 40 programming languages reporting back the impact of every commit or PR, issues concerning code style, best practices and security.

Phabricator

Phabricator

Phabricator is a collection of open source web applications that help software companies build better software.

PullReview

PullReview

PullReview helps Ruby and Rails developers to develop new features cleanly, on-time, and with confidence by automatically reviewing their code.

Gerrit Code Review

Gerrit Code Review

Gerrit is a self-hosted pre-commit code review tool. It serves as a Git hosting server with option to comment incoming changes. It is highly configurable and extensible with default guarding policies, webhooks, project access control and more.

SonarQube

SonarQube

SonarQube provides an overview of the overall health of your source code and even more importantly, it highlights issues found on new code. With a Quality Gate set on your project, you will simply fix the Leak and start mechanically improving.

CodeFactor.io

CodeFactor.io

CodeFactor.io automatically and continuously tracks code quality with every GitHub or BitBucket commit and pull request, helping software developers save time in code reviews and efficiently tackle technical debt.

ESLint

ESLint

A pluggable and configurable linter tool for identifying and reporting on patterns in JavaScript. Maintain your code quality with ease.

Amazon CodeGuru

Amazon CodeGuru

It is a machine learning service for automated code reviews and application performance recommendations. It helps you find the most expensive lines of code that hurt application performance and keep you up all night troubleshooting, then gives you specific recommendations to fix or improve your code.

Reviewable

Reviewable

A code review tool for GitHub pull requests inspired by Google's internal tool. Powerful diffing and workflow features wrapped in a beautiful UI, with seamless GitHub integration. Free for public repos.

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