Fast, offline code metrics and quality gates for multiple languages

cpath makes code metrics accessible without requiring anything but your source code. It is fast, free, and fully offline. It requires no setup, you use a single binary executable. Point the binary at local source code to measure it. Scanning requires no mandatory configuration, language SDK or build procedure.

Supported languages

• C
• C++
• C#
• Go
• Java
• JavaScript
• Python
• Rust
• TypeScript and TSX

Supported platforms

• Linux
• Windows
• macOS

Supported metrics

• CC - cognitive complexity
• MI - maintainability index
• LOC - nonblank lines containing code, excluding comment-only lines

CI gate

Check changes without checking out another revision:

cpath gate [<commit> | <from> <to>] --pretty

With no commits, compare HEAD with uncommitted changes. With one commit, compare its first parent with that commit. With two commits, compare those snapshots. Both committed comparisons ignore uncommitted changes. Working-tree comparisons include staged, unstaged, and non-ignored untracked files, using their current contents on disk.

Example output (abbreviated):

{
    "status": "failed",
    "violations": [
        {
            "file": "src/parser.cpp",
            "line": 142,
            "scope": "parseExpression",
            "classification": "existing",
            "metric": "CC",
            "expected": { "operator": "<=", "value": 28 },
            "actual": 31,
            "previous": 28
        }
    ],
    "exit_code": 1
}

The gate checks individual functions and methods. Existing scopes may change within the CC/MI limits; scopes already outside the limits must not worsen. Possible return codes:

• 0 - no confirmed metric violations, possibly with incomplete analysis
• 1 - one or more metric violations were found
• 2 - command-line arguments were invalid or repository setup failed

See gate behavior, output, and CI usage.

Full repository scan

Calculate all metrics for the current repository and print formatted JSON:

cpath . --metrics=all --pretty

Example output:

{
    "cpath_version": "0.1.0",
    "repository_root": "/path/to/my-project",
    "scanned_files": [
        {
            "path": "src/main.rs",
            "CC": 3,
            "MI": 82,
            "LOC": 120
        }
    ],
    "exit_code": 0
}

Possible return codes:

• 0 - scan completed
• 1 - a fatal error prevented the scan
• 2 - command-line arguments were invalid
• 3 - the scan completed with one or more unscored files

Installation

Download cpath for your platform from the releases page. Each .tar.gz archive contains the executable, signature bundle, checksum, and license information. Signature verification with Cosign is optional but recommended.

Build from source

Install Git, the stable Rust toolchain (including Cargo), and a C/C++ compiler toolchain: GCC or Clang on Linux, Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS, or Visual Studio Build Tools with the Desktop development with C++ workload on Windows.

Clone the repository and build the release executable:

git clone https://github.com/raman-dzehtsiar/cpath.git
cd cpath
cargo build --locked --release

The executable is saved to target/release/cpath on Linux and macOS, or target\release\cpath.exe on Windows. Copy it to a directory on your PATH. Alternatively, build and install in one step from the cloned repository:

cargo install --locked --path .

Limitations

Initially, cpath was created as an assisting tool for a research project studying how code metrics affect different properties of AI coding agents. The current design, functional scope, and CLI interface are defined by those needs. However, cpath can also be useful for many other practical applications.

Approximation

Values reported by cpath may differ slightly from values reported by baseline language-specific tools. In most cases, the difference is close to zero and rarely reaches 1 point. For most supported languages and metrics, cpath matches baseline tools 100% of the time, with no differences; many of the remaining comparisons have 99.9% accuracy. You can find more details in the benchmark notes.

Conditional compilation in C and C++

Although most C and C++ syntax is covered, some rare, highly specific conditional-compilation statements are not supported. If your code contains such statements, those files will be skipped explicitly with a clear reason in the report, as in the usage example.

Preferred communication channels

To ask a question, request a change or a new feature, propose an idea, or report a bug, please open a GitHub issue in this project. For anything related to the initial research mentioned above, please send an email to contact@cpath.app.

License

cpath’s original code is licensed under the MIT license. See LICENSE.txt. Third-party components retain their respective copyrights and licenses.