Another way would by to use another loc utility, like LocMetrics for instance.
It also lists many other loc tools.
The integration with Eclipse wouldn't be always there (as it would be with Metrics2, which you can check out because it is a more recent version than Metrics), but at least those tools can reason in term of logical lines (computed by summing the terminal semicolons and terminal curly braces).
You can also check with eclipse-metrics is more adapted to what you expect.
Install the Eclipse Metrics Plugin. To create a HTML report (with optional XML and CSV) right-click a project -> Export -> Other -> Metrics.
You can adjust the Lines of Code metrics by ignoring blank and comment-only lines or exclude Javadoc if you want. To do this check the tab at Preferences -> Metrics -> LoC.
That's it. There is no special option to exclude curly braces {}.
The plugin offers an alternative metric to LoC called Number of Statements. This is what the author has to say about it:
This metric represents the number of statements in a method. I consider it a more robust measure than Lines of Code since the latter is fragile with respect to different formatting conventions.
Edit:
After you clarified your question, I understand that you need a view for real-time metrics violations, like compiler warnings or errors. You also need a reporting functionality to create reports for your boss. The plugin I described above is for reporting because you have to export the metrics when you want to see them.
ProjectCodeMeter counts LLOC (logical lines of code) exactly as you described (only effective lines). it integrates into eclipse as external code metrics tool, it's not real-time though, it generates a report.actually it counts many source code metrics such as complexity, arithmetic intricacy, hard coded strings, numeric constants.. even estimates development time in hours.
You have to install it as a web-app running the analysis off your source code repository, but it also has an Eclipse plugin.
It's overkill if you just want to know, as a one-off, how many lines of code there are in your project. If you want to track metrics through time, compare across projects, fire warnings when a threshold is exceeded, etc., it's fantastic.
Disclosure: I have no financial relationship with SonarSource.
One possible way to count lines of code in Eclipse:
using the Search / File... menu, select File Search tab, specify \n[\s]* for Containing text (this will not count empty lines), and tick Regular expression.
I created a Eclipse plugin, which can count the lines of source code.
It support Kotlin, Java, Java Script, JSP, XML, C/C++, C#, and many other file types.
Please take a look at it.
Any feedback would be appreciated!
The first thing to do is to determine your definition of "line of code" (LOC). In both your question
It counts a line with just one } as a line and he doesn't want that to
count as "its not a line, its a style choice"
and in the answers, e.g.,
You can adjust the Lines of Code metrics by ignoring blank and comment-only lines or exclude Javadoc if you want
you can tell that people have different opinions as to what constitutes a line of code. In particular, people are often imprecise about whether they really want the number of lines of code or the number of statements. For example, if you have the following really long line filled with statements, what do you want to report, 1 LOC or hundreds of statements?
{ a = 1; b = 2; if (a==c) b++; /* etc. for another 1000 characters */ }
And when somebody asks you what you are calling a LOC, make sure you can answer, even if it is just "my definition of a LOC is Metrics2's definition". In general, for most commonly formatted code (unlike my example), the popular tools will give numbers fairly similar, so Metrics2, SonarQube, etc. should all be fine, as long as you use them consistently. In other words, don't count the LOC of some code using one tool and compare that value to a later version of that code that was measured with a different tool.