PMD 6.13.0 released

31 March 2019

31-March-2019 - 6.13.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.13.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

We are still searching for a new logo for PMD for the next major release.

Learn more about how to participate on github issue 1663.

Java 12 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 12. PMD can parse the new Switch Expressions and resolve the type of such an expression.

Note: The Switch Expressions are a preview language feature of OpenJDK 12 and are not enabled by default. In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these language features, you’ll need to enable it via the new environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd ...

Quickstart Ruleset for Apex

PMD provides now a quickstart ruleset for Salesforce.com Apex, which you can use as a base ruleset to get your custom ruleset started. You can reference it with rulesets/apex/quickstart.xml. You are strongly encouraged to create your own ruleset though.

The quickstart ruleset has the intention, to be useful out-of-the-box for many projects. Therefore it references only rules, that are most likely to apply everywhere.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

PMD Designer

The rule designer’s codebase has been moved out of the main repository and will be developed at pmd/pmd-designer from now on. The maven coordinates will stay the same for the time being. The designer will still be shipped with PMD’s binaries.

Improved Apex Support

  • Many AST nodes now expose more information which makes it easier to write XPath-based rules for Apex. Here are some examples:
    • Annotation[@Resolved = false()] finds unsupported annotations.
    • AnnotationParameter[@Name='RestResource'][@Value='/myurl'] gives access to annotation parameters.
    • CatchBlockStatement[@ExceptionType='Exception'][@VariableName='e'] finds catch block for specific exception types.
    • Field[@Type='String'] find all String fields, Field[string-length(@Name) < 5] finds all fields with short names and Field[@Value='a'] find alls fields, that are initialized with a specific value.
    • LiteralExpression[@String = true()] finds all String literals. There are attributes for each type: @Boolean, @Integer, @Double, @Long, @Decimal, @Null.
    • Method[@Constructor = true()] selects all constructors. Method[@ReturnType = 'String'] selects all methods that return a String.
    • The ModifierNode node has a couple of attributes to check for the existence of specific modifiers: @Test, @TestOrTestSetup, @WithSharing, @WithoutSharing, @InheritedSharing, @WebService, @Global, @Override.
    • Many nodes now expose their type. E.g. with Parameter[@Type='Integer'] you can find all method parameters of type Integer. The same attribute Type exists as well for: NewObjectExpression, Property, VariableDeclaration.
    • VariableExpression[@Image='i'] finds all variable usages of the variable “i”.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule AvoidUncheckedExceptionsInSignatures (java-design) finds methods or constructors that declare unchecked exceptions in their throws clause. This forces the caller to handle the exception, even though it is a runtime exception.

  • The new Java rule DetachedTestCase (java-errorprone) searches for public methods in test classes, which are not annotated with @Test. These methods might be test cases where the annotation has been forgotten. Because of that those test cases are never executed.

  • The new Java rule WhileLoopWithLiteralBoolean (java-bestpractices) finds Do-While-Loops and While-Loops that can be simplified since they use simply true or false as their loop condition.

  • The new Apex rule ApexAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage (apex-bestpractices) searches for assertions in unit tests and checks, whether they use a message argument.

  • The new Apex rule ApexUnitTestMethodShouldHaveIsTestAnnotation (apex-bestpractices) searches for methods in test classes, which are missing the @IsTest annotation.

  • The new PLSQL rule AvoidTabCharacter (plsql-codestyle) checks, that there are no tab characters (“\t”) in the source file.

  • The new PLSQL rule LineLength (plsql-codestyle) helps to enforce a maximum line length.

Fixed Issues

  • doc
    • #1721: [doc] Documentation provides an invalid property configuration example
  • java
    • #1537: [java] Java 12 support
  • java-bestpractices
    • #1701: [java] UseTryWithResources does not handle multiple argument close methods
  • java-codestyle
    • #1527: [java] UseUnderscoresInNumericLiterals false positive on floating point numbers
    • #1674: [java] documentation of CommentDefaultAccessModifier is wrong
  • java-errorprone
    • #1570: [java] AvoidDuplicateLiterals warning about deprecated separator property when not used
  • plsql
    • #1510: [plsql] Support XMLTABLE functions
    • #1716: [plsql] Support access to whole plsql code
    • #1731: [pslql] ParseException when parsing ELSIF
    • #1733: [plsql] % not supported in “TestSearch%notfound”
    • #1734: [plsql] TooManyMethods false-negative
    • #1735: [plsql] False-negatives for TO_DATE_TO_CHAR, TO_DATEWithoutDateFormat, TO_TIMESTAMPWithoutDateFormat

API Changes

Command Line Interface

The start scripts run.sh, pmd.bat and cpd.bat support the new environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS. This can be used to set arbitrary JVM options for running PMD, such as memory settings (e.g. PMD_JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx512m) or enable preview language features (e.g. PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview).

The previously available variables such as OPTS or HEAPSIZE are deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0.

Deprecated API

  • CodeClimateRule is deprecated in 7.0.0 because it was unused for 2 years and created an unwanted dependency. Properties “cc_categories”, “cc_remediation_points_multiplier”, “cc_block_highlighting” will also be removed. See #1702 for more.

  • The Apex ruleset rulesets/apex/ruleset.xml has been deprecated and will be removed in 7.0.0. Please use the new quickstart ruleset rulesets/apex/quickstart.xml instead.

External Contributions