Hackystat is a client-server system, where the "client" consists of your local development environment, and the "server" consists of the Hackystat web application which receives and stores the raw data generated by the client and performs analyses on them. The purpose of this chapter is to show you how to install and use individual Hackystat sensors, which are the client-side software used to gather measurement data. For information on how to configure your user account on the Hackystat server, see Chapter 3, Server-side configuration: User account registration and preferences.

Hackystat tool sensors are small programs that are attached to your development tools, such as your editor, build system, configuration management server, test framework, defect management tool, and so forth. They silently and unobtrusively monitor your use of these tools, and periodically send this raw sensor data off to your Hackystat server. For example, a unit test tool sensor might gather data on when you invoked unit tests, which ones were invoked, and which ones passed and which ones failed. This raw data is accessable only to you using the key emailed to you by the Hackystat server when you registered. If you are working but not connected to the network, for example while at home or while traveling, Hackystat tool sensors temporarily save their accumulated data on your local disk and then send all of the data to the server once you are working and reconnected.

Hackystat tool sensors are customized along two dimensions. First, they are customized to a specific development tool. For example, the Hackystat tool sensor for the Emacs editor is implemented completely differently from the Hackystat tool sensor for the Eclipse editor. Second, they are customized to support one or more types of sensor data. For example, the Hackystat tool sensor for the Emacs editor might collect Activity and FileMetric sensor data, while the Hackystat tool sensor for the Eclipse editor might collect both Activity, FileMetric, and JUnit sensor data.

To install, uninstall, and update Hackystat sensors, you use a client-side tool called HackyInstaller. The remainder of this chapter documents the use of this tool. Chapter 26, Sensors provides additional information specific to each sensor.