In Hackystat, a "sensor" is a software plugin or small program that is attached to a development tool. Some development tools might have more than one sensor attached to them. For example, the Eclipse IDE has both a sensor that collects metrics concerning general developer editing activities, as well as a sensor for its Jupiter code review plugin, which collects more specific metrics concerning code review.
Some of the tools that we have developed sensors for include:
Table 1.1. Tools with Hackystat Sensors
| Type | Tools |
|---|---|
| IDE | Emacs, JBuilder, Eclipse, Vim, Visual Studio |
| Office | Excel, Word, PowerPoint, FrontPage |
| Build | Ant, Unix CLI |
| Structural metrics | CCCC, LOCC, Dependency Finder |
| Testing | JUnit, JBlanket |
| Configuration management | CVS, Subversion, Harvest |
| Issue management | Jira |
| Code Review | Jupiter |
Chapter 2, Client-side configuration: Tool sensor installation discusses the set of sensors available in Hackystat and how to install them.