Difference between "complexity" metric and "complexity / method" metric
cyclomatic-complexity, sonarqube
Solution
You can have a look at our "Metric Definitions" Wiki page (and more specifically on the "Complexity" section) to know more about the meaning of metrics found in Sonar.
- "Complexity" is the total complexity of a resource (for a file => sum of the complexities of every class defined in the file)
- "Complexity / method" is the "Complexity" divided by the number of methods found in the file
- ... and so on for the other metrics.
Problem
In Sonar, for a particular Java class, I see : ``` Complexity: 830 Complexity /method: 8,1 ``` How could you explain the difference between those two metrics ? Is "Complexity" the class complexity ? What is the maximum complexity a class should be under ? I know methods should be less than 10 for method complexity, but what is the maximum class complexity number a class should conform to be considered not complex ? Thanks. EDIT I also look at Cyclomatic-Complexity rule violations in the file. For a number of methods, sonar says with different complexity numbers (in french) : "La complexité cyclomatique de la classe est de 28 alors que le maximum autorisé est de 10." in english : "The class cyclomatic complexity is 28 but the maximum allowed is 10". I don't understand why it says "class cyclomatic complexity" as it seems as a "method cyclomatic complexity". Also, the class in question does not appears on top of the most complex class sorted by average complexity/method, as sonar says it has only 8,1 average method complexity.