Many of you have probably heard of SLOCCount, a tool used to count the number of source lines of code (SLOC) in a programming project. In addition, it translates this number to "the cost of development by conventional proprietary means," which I sometimes use to motivate me (I have never been paid explicitly to code). You may have even seen some popular measurements:
- Redhat 7.1 in June 2001: 30 million SLOC and $1.08 billion
- Debian 2.2 in October 2001: 55 million SLOC and $1.6 billion
- Mozilla in October 2001: 2 million SLOC and $190 million or so
- CPAN in July 2004: 15.4 million SLOC and $667 million
- Linux 2.6 (kernel only) in October 2004: 4.2 million SLOC and somewhere between $176 to 612 million
How big is your largest personal project in SLOC? And what, to you, does SLOC mean? Is it, like XP, just a number? Is it possible to compare the numbers of CPAN and those for, say, Mozilla? I would also appreciate any comments from people actually in industry: have you or your managers ever used SLOCCount? Does it do a good job? Is it at least an appropriate tool for comparing project size (or does "compile time" work equally well)? Thanks in advance.