coala at FOSDEM 2016

Hi all!

coala was present at FOSDEM 2016 – it was a pleasure for us to be able to show you what we created at our stand and in the talk.

If you wonder what coala is, you can watch the talk here: http://ftp.fau.de/fosdem/2016/h2215/coala-code-analysis-made-simple.mp4

Or listen to the Hacker Public Radio interview: http://hackerpublicradio.org/#Coala

We have talked to a lot of people and got a lot of feedback – thank you for that, it was awesome! Here are some of the most prominent feedback items (if you think I forgot something valuable please drop a mail to lasse@schuirmann.net):

1. We lack something to check java code: we have corrected that and did a Java Checkstyle integration available in the coala development release or on GitHub.
2. The Interviewer for the Hacker Public Radio asked for Perl – plus they had a stand nearby. We couldn’t help but force a very poor newcomer to create a perl critics wrapper which is currently WIP at GitHub.
3. People wanted Go language support. Nothing easier than that! Go vet and gofmt are supported now, available in current development release and in the source code. GoLint is in the works and more will follow!
4. coala could be too generic to be useful. This is no feedback to be ignored, thanks to the people who brought that up. Our experience with using several different tools for static code analysis has shown that coala is a significant boost in comfort for the user, while writing analysis routines has shown that indeed coala reduces the amount of work needed for creating code analysis significantly. We need to make sure this stays that way and that it does not grow into a huge monster where analysis routines (bears) take over more than they should – actively.
5. Jenkins integration would be awesome. Jenkins currently has wrappers for a lot of tools, coala could simplify this for them and their users. We actually were not aware of this and it is something we really want to give users the best out-of-the-box jenkins experience with their code analysis. We will try to get a GSoC student to work on this.
6. It works. A few people tried it out and it seemed they were genuinely surprised positively. People that knew coala before and ignored it came to us and admitted that we apparently seem to do something that is actually useful. It was very important for us to hear that.
7. Our new logo sucks. Well at least some people liked the old one better, especially the ASCII art which sadly doesn’t do well as a logo. For those of you we have the new release logo for the coala eucalyptus release and we’ll continue to produce those fine pieces of artwork – this one by Christian Witt:

       88        .o88Oo._
      8 |8      d8P         .ooOO8bo._
     8  | 8     88                  '*Y8bo.
     8\ | /8    YA                      '*Y8b   __
    8  \|/ 8     YA                        68o68**8Oo.
    8\  Y  8      "8D                       *"'    "Y8o
    8 \ | /8       Y8     'YB                       .8D
   8   \|/ /8     '8               d8'             8D
   8\   Y / 8       8       d8888b          d      AY
   8 \ / /  8       Y,     d888888         d'  _.oP"
   8  \|/  8         q.    Y8888P'        d8
   8   Y   8          "q.  `Y88P'       d8"
    8  |  8             Y           ,o8P
     8 | 8                    oooo888P"

8. Our new logo is great. Alright now you’ve got us confused – even more people seem to like our new logo. We had people buying shirts because of the logo.
   
9. You have no stickers. That was inexcusable. We will fix that for the next time!

We have also learned a lot about organizing a stand for a conference: beer is good, you need more flyers than you think and it’s stressful but satisfying.

If you want to be up to date about the project, follow https://twitter.com/coala_analyzer.

I’m very happy to tell that apparently a few people of our indian community have managed to get a stand and a talk at FOSSASIA later this year. If you didn’t make it to FOSDEM and live over there – be sure to drop by, talk to them and grab a drink.