DakshSCRA: Source Code Review Assist

by ddos · March 16, 2025

Daksh SCRA (Source Code Review Assist)

Daksh SCRA (Source Code Review Assist) tool is built to enhance the efficiency of the source code review process, providing a well-structured and organized approach for code reviewers.

Rather than indiscriminately flagging everything as a potential issue, Daksh SCRA promotes thoughtful analysis, urging the investigation and confirmation of potential problems. This approach mitigates the scramble to tag every potential concern as a bug, cutting back on the confusion and wasted time spent on false positives.

What sets Daksh SCRA apart is its emphasis on avoiding unnecessary bug tagging. Unlike conventional methods, it advocates for thorough investigation and confirmation of potential issues before tagging them as bugs. This approach helps mitigate the issue of false positives, which often consume valuable time and resources, thereby fostering a more productive and efficient code review process.

Features and Functionalities

Distinctive Features (Multiple World’s First)

Identifies Areas of Interest in Source Code: Encourage focused investigation and confirmation rather than indiscriminately labeling everything as a bug.
Identifies Areas of Interest in File Paths (World’s First): Recognises patterns in file paths to pinpoint relevant sections for review.

Software-Level Reconnaissance to Identify Technologies Utilised: Identifies project technologies, enabling code reviewers to conduct precise scans with appropriate rules.
Automated Scientific Effort Estimation for Code Review (World’s First): Providing a measurable approach for estimating efforts required for a code review process.

Although this tool has progressed beyond its early stages, it has reached a functional state that is quite usable and delivers on its promised capabilities. Nevertheless, active enhancements are currently underway, and there are multiple new features and improvements expected to be added in the upcoming months.

Additionally, the tool offers the following functionalities:

Options to use platform-specific rules specific for finding areas of interests

Options to extend or add new rules for any new or existing languages
Generates report in text, HTML and PDF format for inspection

Install

Pre-requisites

Python3 and all the libraries listed in requirements.txt

Setting up the environment to run this tool

1. Setup a virtual environment

$ pip install virtualenv

$ virtualenv -p python3 {name-of-virtual-env} // Create a virtualenv
Example: virtualenv -p python3 venv

$ source {name-of-virtual-env}/bin/activate // To activate virtual environment you just created
Example: source venv/bin/activate

After running the activate command you should see the name of your virtual env at the beginning of your terminal like this: (venv) $

2. Ensure all required libraries are installed within the virtual environment

You must run the below command after activating the virtual environment as mentioned in the previous steps.

pip install -r requirements.txt

Once the above step successfully installs all the required libraries, refer to the following tool usage commands to run the tool.

Use

Source Code Review

Reports

The tool generates reports in three formats: HTML, PDF, and TEXT. Although the HTML and PDF reports are still being improved, they are currently in a reasonably good state. With each subsequent iteration, these reports will continue to be refined and improved even further.

RAW TEXT-Based Reports:

Areas of Interest – Identified Patterns: DakshSCRA/reports/text/areas_of_interest.txt
Areas of Interest – Enumerated Project Files: DakshSCRA/reports/text/filepaths_aoi.txt
Identified Project Files: DakshSCRA/runtime/filepaths.txt

DakshSCRA: Source Code Review Assist