Table of Contents
💡 Overview
PMD is an extensible multilanguage static code analyzer. It finds common programming flaws like unused variables, empty catch blocks, unnecessary object creation, and so forth. It’s mainly concerned with Java and Apex, but supports 16 other languages. It comes with 400+ built-in rules. It can be extended with custom rules. It uses JavaCC and Antlr to parse source files into abstract syntax trees (AST) and runs rules against them to find violations. Rules can be written in Java or using a XPath query.
Currently, PMD supports Java, JavaScript, Salesforce.com Apex and Visualforce, Kotlin, Swift, Modelica, PLSQL, Apache Velocity, JSP, WSDL, Maven POM, HTML, XML and XSL. Scala is supported, but there are currently no Scala rules available.
Additionally, it includes CPD, the copy-paste-detector. CPD finds duplicated code in Coco, C/C++, C#, Dart, Fortran, Gherkin, Go, Groovy, HTML, Java, JavaScript, JSP, Julia, Kotlin, Lua, Matlab, Modelica, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, PLSQL, Python, Ruby, Salesforce.com Apex and Visualforce, Scala, Swift, T-SQL, Typescript, Apache Velocity, WSDL, XML and XSL.
PMD features many built-in checks (in PMD lingo, rules), which are documented for each language in our Rule references. We also support an extensive API to write your own rules, which you can do either in Java or as a self-contained XPath query.
PMD is most useful when integrated into your build process. It can then be used as a quality gate, to enforce a coding standard for your codebase. Among other things, PMD can be run:
- As a Maven goal
- As an Ant task
- As a Gradle task
- As a bld operation
- From command-line
CPD, the copy-paste detector, is also distributed with PMD. You can use it in a variety of ways, which are documented here.
💾 Download
The latest release of PMD can be downloaded from our Github releases page.
The Logo is available from the Logo Project Page.
📖 Documentation
The rest of this page exposes the contents of the documentation site thematically, which you can further scope down using the blue filter buttons. To navigate the site, you may also use the search bar in the top right, or the sidebar on the left.
✨ Contributors
This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!
See credits for the complete list.
These pages summarize the gist of PMD usage to get you started quickly.
Pick your language to find out about the rule it supports.
These pages document the process of writing and testing custom rules and metrics for PMD.
Learn how to build effective and versatile rulesets.
If you'd like to help us build PMD, these topics may interest you. See you around!
These pages describe solutions that integrate PMD within your build process.