Are Open-Source SystemsDeveloped with Good CodeQuality? An Empirical Study

Abstract: Due to the surge in the development of software, people in the software industry have a need for higher coding quality in different programming languages. A “code with good quality” can be defined as code that is written in a way that follows the rules or, in other words, conventions for, i.e., comments, proper indentation, clear notations, simplicity, naming, etc. There are coding style guidelines extracted from Java and Oracle code conventions to have readable, maintainable source code; however, the current studies do not answer the question of to what extent the open-source systems follow these guidelines. Finding the violations of conventions at the early stages of software development is essential because the changes are costly and impossible in the later stages. As a result, adhering to coding conventions will facilitate code readability and maintainability. Thus, this study intends to analyze the results from several code quality tools, make a comparison among them and, based on the outcomes, develop a new tool that covers the probable missing conventions in the studied code-checking tools.