I spent a little time this afternoon looking at the new Code Metrics functionality that has appeared in Visual Studio “Orcas”.  I think that there are a number of different things that need to be said about this feature.  The first is that the list of metrics available is short.  Don’t expect to be wowed and inundated with this like you will be by using nDepend. 

No matter, the integration in the IDE is sweet.  Top that off with the intuitive treeview drill down of the elements being measured and you’ll be in eye candy heaven.  Some things don’t look right either (this is beta remember).  For instance, the Lines of Code column for the project shows a value of 2.5.  Obviously this is not a true total.  Maybe it’s an average and I can’t find the formula that is being used.  A nice feature is the ability to filter by the values in the different columns.  This will allow you to check metrics based on threshold values and focus on the areas of your code that need work.

If you’re looking for a hard core code analysis tool, go get nDepend and some asprin.  If all you want is something to start with, this might just be for you.  You don’t get a whole bunch of stuff from the Code Metrics in Visual Studio “Orcas”, but it is in the IDE and that’s enough to have me excited about what’s going to come in the future.