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Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

code.facebook.com

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Re: Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

#21

Post by qznc »

avarun wrote: post #14
tomstockmail wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear the tool works well for FB employee's. As always the contribution to the community is much appreciated. But as others have pointed out, the tool name could use a rebranding. The popular SonarCube is just one example where confusion can arise.

Facebook has been using it internally for a long time. It would make no sense for them to rename the tool for open-source release just because a naming conflict exists, unless you'd prefer they just not release it at all?

Why not? Google renames every internal tool they release as well. E.g. Blaze -> Bazel and Rietveld -> Gerrit.

Re: Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

#22

Post by artosispylon »

tomstockmail wrote: post #12
artosispylon wrote: post #11

I use this tool every day at FB and it's awesome. I highly encourage you to try it and see if it fits into your workflow!

Glad to hear the tool works well for FB employee's. As always the contribution to the community is much appreciated. But as others have pointed out, the tool name could use a rebranding. The popular SonarCube is just one example where confusion can arise.

Thanks for bringing the naming up. I wasn't aware of these other tools. SonarQube looks interesting, though! Just to clarify, I don't contribute to Sonar development, I'm just a heavy user. I think the team is aware of your concerns now though (Emil is the OP and works on Sonar development).

Re: Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

#23

Post by cjhopman »

qznc wrote: post #21
avarun wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has been using it internally for a long time. It would make no sense for them to rename the tool for open-source release just because a naming conflict exists, unless you'd prefer they just not release it at all?

Why not? Google renames every internal tool they release as well. E.g. Blaze -> Bazel and Rietveld -> Gerrit.

> Rietveld -> Gerrit

That's a bad example. Gerrit is not a new name for Reitveld, it's a totally new implementation (with similar inspiration). And both of those were publicly released under those names.

Your underlying point is quite true, though.

Re: Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

#24

Post by mkempe »

kodablah wrote: post #2

I rarely comment on name ambiguity because there is rarely overlap, but this does overlap a bit with the Sonar CI analysis tool IMO. Reading this post, I can create a Sonar plugin with Java? OK, let me Google "Sonar Java plugin"...

This is so confusing. My immediate reactions were a) but Sonar is already open-source! b) did Facebook somehow acquire Sonar? c) oh, they're actually polluting the name space.

Re: Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

#25

Post by jwilk »

ergothus wrote: post #18
kilon wrote: post #13

I agree unique naming is one of the fundamental pillars of modern coding , or else we would have chaos with stupid generic completely unrelated names like Python, C, Java, Go, Swift, Ruby, Assembly, Basic, JavaScript ... It would have been chaos. Obviously none would like that, would they ?

To be fair, most of those pre-date an era where the name collision would be a known significant problem. I remember when Starcraft was released and being frustrated that the young web at the time only gave me info on camping trailers, but even that is much later than half your examples. Also, many of those you name collide with words that have no particular collision within the industry, so while you and I might thin…

There was also another language called Go beforehand:

https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9

Re: Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

#26

Post by krschultz »

avarun wrote: post #14
tomstockmail wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear the tool works well for FB employee's. As always the contribution to the community is much appreciated. But as others have pointed out, the tool name could use a rebranding. The popular SonarCube is just one example where confusion can arise.

Facebook has been using it internally for a long time. It would make no sense for them to rename the tool for open-source release just because a naming conflict exists, unless you'd prefer they just not release it at all?

We typically do rename before open sourcing and intend to avoid namespace collisions. E.g. Litho was not the original name of that framework either.

I am familiar with most of the other tools mentioned here (e.g. SonarJava) from my time doing Java development outside of Facebook and never had a collision in my head because this project is not actually a library or tool for Java. It's a standalone Electron app that works on iOS and Android for debugging purposes, the only Java part is incidental in the Android app (and could be Kotlin or C++ or whatever you want).

Re: Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

#29

Post by baby »

jwilk wrote: post #25
ergothus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most of those pre-date an era where the name collision would be a known significant problem. I remember when Starcraft was released and being frustrated that the young web at the time only gave me info on camping trailers, but even that is much later than half your examples. Also, many of those you name collide with words that have no particular collision within the industry, so while you and I might thin…

There was also another language called Go beforehand: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9

Golang is the worst because there is already a very popular game called Go. That's why I always call Golang Golang and not Go.

Re: Open-sourcing Sonar, a new extensible debugging tool

#30

Post by batbomb »

krschultz wrote: post #26
avarun wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has been using it internally for a long time. It would make no sense for them to rename the tool for open-source release just because a naming conflict exists, unless you'd prefer they just not release it at all?

We typically do rename before open sourcing and intend to avoid namespace collisions. E.g. Litho was not the original name of that framework either. I am familiar with most of the other tools mentioned here (e.g. SonarJava) from my time doing Java development outside of Facebook and never had a collision in my head because this project is not actually a library or tool for Java. It's a standalone Electron app that wo…

SonarQube isn’t just Java, it’s a generic framework for reporting from any language
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