10.Stack

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Task Overview
I was able to complete all five tasks successfully. I came across several problems during this assignment, all of which I was able to overcome.

The process of downloading and installing ant, all of the tools, and setting all the environment variables was rather simple. The instructions were straightforward and I was easily able to get my version of the Stack project could pass the "verify" script.

The most difficult part of this project, for me, was creating the javancss.build.xml file. I have quite a bit of HTML experience but I have never used XML. I had several problems with the path variables required by JavaNCSS. However, after going over the other build files provided and looking at the samples given on the JavaNCSS Website, I was able to accomplish this task.

The final task involved running emma and increasing the coverage to 100% by writing additional test cases. I really liked this tool. It provided very clear information and can make it much easier to write meaningful test cases.

Conclusions
Some of theses tools may be very useful in the development of software projects. However, I think they are all not necessary. The most useful, I feel, are CheckStyle, FindBugs, PMD, and emma. SCLC and JavaNCSS both provide similar information, yet JavaNCSS provides a little bit more (Cyclomatic Complexity Number, etc.). I do not see the information provided by these two tools as being very useful in most software development projects. All the other tools, however, were very helpful and I could see using them in the future. They may even help me break my "bad" habit of putting opening braces on their own lines.