Previous versions of PMD can be downloaded here: https://github.com/pmd/pmd/releases

25-March-2023 - 7.0.0-rc1

We’re excited to bring you the next major version of PMD!

Since this is a big release, we provide here only a concise version of the release notes. We prepared a separate page with the full Detailed Release Notes for PMD 7.0.0.

ℹ️ Release Candidates

PMD 7.0.0 is finally almost ready. In order to gather feedback, we are going to ship a couple of release candidates. These are officially available on GitHub and Maven Central and can be used as usual (e.g. as a dependency). We encourage you to try out the new features, but keep in mind that we may introduce API breaking changes between the release candidates. It should be stable enough if you don't use custom rules.

We have still some tasks planned for the next release candidates. You can see the progress in PMD 7 Tracking Issue #3898.

If you find any problem or difficulty while updating from PMD 6, please provide feedback via our issue tracker. That way we can improve the experience for all.

Table Of Contents

🚀 Major Features and Enhancements

The new official logo of PMD:

New PMD Logo

Revamped Java module

  • Java grammar substantially refactored - more correct regarding the Java Language Specification (JLS)
  • Built-in rules have been upgraded for the changed AST
  • Rewritten type resolution framework and symbol table correctly implements the JLS
  • AST exposes more semantic information (method calls, field accesses)

For more information, see the Detailed Release Notes for PMD 7.

Contributors: Clément Fournier (@oowekyala), Andreas Dangel (@adangel), Juan Martín Sotuyo Dodero (@jsotuyod)

Revamped Command Line Interface

  • unified and consistent Command Line Interface for both Linux/Unix and Windows across our different utilities
  • single script pmd (pmd.bat for Windows) to launch the different utilities:
    • pmd check to run PMD rules and analyze a project
    • pmd cpd to run CPD (copy paste detector)
    • pmd designer to run the PMD Rule Designer
  • progress bar support for pmd check
  • shell completion

Demo

For more information, see the Detailed Release Notes for PMD 7.

Contributors: Juan Martín Sotuyo Dodero (@jsotuyod)

Full Antlr support

  • Antlr based grammars can now be used to build full-fledged PMD rules.
  • Previously, Antlr grammar could only be used for CPD
  • New supported languages: Swift and Kotlin

For more information, see the Detailed Release Notes for PMD 7.

Contributors: Lucas Soncini (@lsoncini), Matías Fraga (@matifraga), Tomás De Lucca (@tomidelucca)

🎉 Language Related Changes

Note that this is just a concise listing of the highlight. For more information on the languages, see the Detailed Release Notes for PMD 7.

New: Swift support

  • use PMD to analyze Swift code with PMD rules
  • initially 4 built-in rules

Contributors: Lucas Soncini (@lsoncini), Matías Fraga (@matifraga), Tomás De Lucca (@tomidelucca)

New: Kotlin support (experimental)

  • use PMD to analyze Kotlin code with PMD rules
  • Support for Kotlin 1.8 grammar
  • initially 2 built-in rules

Changed: JavaScript support

  • latest version supports ES6 and also some new constructs (see Rhino])
  • comments are retained

Changed: Language versions

  • more predefined language versions for each supported language
  • can be used to limit rule execution for specific versions only with minimumLanguageVersion and maximumLanguageVersion attributes.

🌟 New and changed rules

New Rules

Apex

Java

  • UnnecessaryBoxing reports boxing and unboxing conversions that may be made implicit.

Kotlin

Swift

Changed Rules

Java

  • UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName: the rule has two new properties, to selectively disable reporting on static field and method qualifiers. The rule also has been improved to be more precise.
  • UselessParentheses: the rule has two new properties which control how strict the rule should be applied. With ignoreClarifying (default: true) parentheses that are strictly speaking not necessary are allowed, if they separate expressions of different precedence. The other property ignoreBalancing (default: true) is similar, in that it allows parentheses that help reading and understanding the expressions.
  • LooseCoupling: the rule has a new property to allow some types to be coupled to (allowedTypes).
  • EmptyCatchBlock: CloneNotSupportedException and InterruptedException are not special-cased anymore. Rename the exception parameter to ignored to ignore them.
  • DontImportSun: sun.misc.Signal is not special-cased anymore.
  • UseDiamondOperator: the property java7Compatibility is removed. The rule now handles Java 7 properly without a property.
  • SingularField: Properties checkInnerClasses and disallowNotAssignment are removed. The rule is now more precise and will check these cases properly.
  • UseUtilityClass: The property ignoredAnnotations has been removed.
  • LawOfDemeter: the rule has a new property trustRadius. This defines the maximum degree of trusted data. The default of 1 is the most restrictive.
  • CommentContent: The properties caseSensitive and disallowedTerms are removed. The new property fobiddenRegex can be used now to define the disallowed terms with a single regular expression.

Removed Rules

Many rules, that were previously deprecated have been finally removed. See Detailed Release Notes for PMD 7 for the complete list.

🚨 API

The API of PMD has been growing over the years and needed some cleanup. The goal is, to have a clear separation between a well-defined API and the implementation, which is internal. This should help us in future development.

Also, there are some improvement and changes in different areas. For the detailed description of the changes listed here, see Detailed Release Notes for PMD 7.

  • Miscellaneous smaller changes and cleanups
  • XPath 3.1 support for XPath-based rules
  • Node stream API for AST traversal
  • Metrics framework
  • Testing framework
  • Language Lifecycle and Language Properties

💥 Compatibility and migration notes

See Detailed Release Notes for PMD 7.

🐛 Fixed Issues

  • miscellaneous
    • #881: [all] Breaking API changes for 7.0.0
    • #896: [all] Use slf4j
    • #1431: [ui] Remove old GUI applications (designerold, bgastviewer)
    • #1451: [core] RulesetFactoryCompatibility stores the whole ruleset file in memory as a string
    • #2496: Update PMD 7 Logo on landing page
    • #2497: PMD 7 Logo page
    • #2498: Update PMD 7 Logo in documentation
    • #3797: [all] Use JUnit5
  • ant
    • #4080: [ant] Split off Ant integration into a new submodule
  • core
    • #880: [core] Make visitors generic
    • #1622: [core] NodeStream API
    • #1687: [core] Deprecate and Remove XPath 1.0 support
    • #1785: [core] Allow abstract node types to be valid rulechain visits
    • #1825: [core] Support NoAttribute for XPath
    • #2038: [core] Remove DCD
    • #2218: [core] isFindBoundary should not be an attribute
    • #2234: [core] Consolidate PMD CLI into a single command
    • #2239: [core] Merging Javacc build scripts
    • #2518: [core] Language properties
    • #2602: [core] Remove ParserOptions
    • #2614: [core] Upgrade Saxon, add XPath 3.1, remove Jaxen
    • #2696: [core] Remove DFA
    • #2821: [core] Rule processing error filenames are missing paths
    • #2873: [core] Utility classes in pmd 7
    • #2885: [core] Error recovery mode
    • #3203: [core] Replace RuleViolationFactory implementations with ViolationDecorator
    • #3692: [core] Analysis listeners
    • #3782: [core] Language lifecycle
    • #3815: [core] Update Saxon HE to 10.7
    • #3893: [core] Text documents
    • #3902: [core] Violation decorators
    • #3918: [core] Make LanguageRegistry non static
    • #3922: [core] Better error reporting for the ruleset parser
    • #4035: [core] ConcurrentModificationException in DefaultRuleViolationFactory
    • #4120: [core] Explicitly name all language versions
    • #4353: [core] Micro optimizations for Node API
    • #4365: [core] Improve benchmarking
    • #4420: [core] Remove PMD.EOL
  • cli
    • #2234: [core] Consolidate PMD CLI into a single command
    • #3828: [core] Progress reporting
    • #4079: [cli] Split off CLI implementation into a pmd-cli submodule
  • testing
    • #2435: [test] Remove duplicated Dummy language module
    • #4234: [test] Tests that change the logging level do not work

Language specific fixes:

  • apex
    • #1937: [apex] Apex should only have a single RootNode
    • #1648: [apex,vf] Remove CodeClimate dependency
    • #1750: [apex] Remove apex statistical rules
    • #2836: [apex] Remove Apex ProjectMirror
    • #4427: [apex] ApexBadCrypto test failing to detect inline code
  • apex-design
    • #2667: [apex] Integrate nawforce/ApexLink to build robust Unused rule
  • java
    • #520: [java] Allow @SuppressWarnings with constants instead of literals
    • #864: [java] Similar/duplicated implementations for determining FQCN
    • #905: [java] Add new node for anonymous class declaration
    • #910: [java] AST inconsistency between primitive and reference type arrays
    • #997: [java] Java8 parsing corner case with annotated array types
    • #998: [java] AST inconsistencies around FormalParameter
    • #1019: [java] Breaking Java Grammar changes for PMD 7.0.0
    • #1124: [java] ImmutableList implementation in the qname codebase
    • #1128: [java] Improve ASTLocalVariableDeclaration
    • #1150: [java] ClassOrInterfaceType AST improvements
    • #1207: [java] Resolve explicit types using FQCNs, without hitting the classloader
    • #1367: [java] Parsing error on annotated inner class
    • #1661: [java] About operator nodes
    • #2366: [java] Remove qualified names
    • #2819: [java] GLB bugs in pmd 7
    • #3763: [java] Ambiguous reference error in valid code
    • #3749: [java] Improve isOverridden in ASTMethodDeclaration
    • #3750: [java] Make symbol table support instanceof pattern bindings
    • #3752: [java] Expose annotations in symbol API
    • #4237: [java] Cleanup handling of Java comments
    • #4317: [java] Some AST nodes should not be TypeNodes
    • #4359: [java] Type resolution fails with NPE when the scope is not a type declaration
    • #4367: [java] Move testrule TypeResTest into internal
  • java-bestpractices
    • #342: [java] AccessorMethodGeneration: Name clash with another public field not properly handled
    • #755: [java] AccessorClassGeneration false positive for private constructors
    • #770: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod yields false positive for counter-variant arguments
    • #807: [java] AccessorMethodGeneration false positive with overloads
    • #833: [java] ForLoopCanBeForeach should consider iterating on this
    • #1189: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod false positive from inner class via external class
    • #1205: [java] Improve ConstantsInInterface message to mention alternatives
    • #1212: [java] Don’t raise JUnitTestContainsTooManyAsserts on JUnit 5’s assertAll
    • #1422: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert false positive with inherited @Rule field
    • #1565: [java] JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage false positive with AssertJ
    • #1747: [java] PreserveStackTrace false-positive
    • #1969: [java] MissingOverride false-positive triggered by package-private method overwritten in another package by extending class
    • #1998: [java] AccessorClassGeneration false-negative: subclass calls private constructor
    • #2130: [java] UnusedLocalVariable: false-negative with array
    • #2147: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert - false positives with lambdas and static methods
    • #2464: [java] LooseCoupling must ignore class literals: ArrayList.class
    • #2542: [java] UseCollectionIsEmpty can not detect the case foo.bar().size()
    • #2650: [java] UseTryWithResources false positive when AutoCloseable helper used
    • #2796: [java] UnusedAssignment false positive with call chains
    • #2797: [java] MissingOverride long-standing issues
    • #2806: [java] SwitchStmtsShouldHaveDefault false-positive with Java 14 switch non-fallthrough branches
    • #2822: [java] LooseCoupling rule: Extend to cover user defined implementations and interfaces
    • #2843: [java] Fix UnusedAssignment FP with field accesses
    • #2882: [java] UseTryWithResources - false negative for explicit close
    • #2883: [java] JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage false positive with method call
    • #2890: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod false positive with generics
    • #2946: [java] SwitchStmtsShouldHaveDefault false positive on enum inside enums
    • #3672: [java] LooseCoupling - fix false positive with generics
    • #3675: [java] MissingOverride - fix false positive with mixing type vars
  • java-codestyle
    • #1208: [java] PrematureDeclaration rule false-positive on variable declared to measure time
    • #1429: [java] PrematureDeclaration as result of method call (false positive)
    • #1673: [java] UselessParentheses false positive with conditional operator
    • #1790: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName false positive with enum constant
    • #1918: [java] UselessParentheses false positive with boolean operators
    • #2134: [java] PreserveStackTrace not handling Throwable.addSuppressed(...)
    • #2299: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName false positive with similar package name
    • #2391: [java] UseDiamondOperator FP when expected type and constructed type have a different parameterization
    • #2528: [java] MethodNamingConventions - JUnit 5 method naming not support ParameterizedTest
    • #2739: [java] UselessParentheses false positive for string concatenation
    • #2748: [java] UnnecessaryCast false positive with unchecked cast
    • #2973: [java] New rule: UnnecessaryBoxing
    • #3195: [java] Improve rule UnnecessaryReturn to detect more cases
    • #3218: [java] Generalize UnnecessaryCast to flag all unnecessary casts
    • #3221: [java] PrematureDeclaration false positive for unused variables
    • #3238: [java] Improve ExprContext, fix FNs of UnnecessaryCast
    • #3500: [java] UnnecessaryBoxing - check for Integer.valueOf(String) calls
    • #4357: [java] Fix IllegalStateException in UseDiamondOperator rule
  • java-design
    • #1014: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive with lambda expression
    • #1605: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive for standard UTF-8 charset name
    • #2175: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive for chained methods with generic method call
    • #2179: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive with static property access - should treat class-level property as global object, not dot-accessed property
    • #2180: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive with Thread and ThreadLocalRandom
    • #2182: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive with package-private access
    • #2188: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive with fields assigned to local vars
    • #2536: [java] ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal can’t detect inner class
    • #3668: [java] ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal - fix FP with inner private classes
    • #3754: [java] SingularField false positive with read in while condition
    • #3786: [java] SimplifyBooleanReturns should consider operator precedence
    • #4238: [java] Make LawOfDemeter not use the rulechain
  • java-documentation
    • #4369: [java] Improve CommentSize
    • #4416: [java] Fix reported line number in CommentContentRule
  • java-errorprone
    • #659: [java] MissingBreakInSwitch - last default case does not contain a break
    • #1005: [java] CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable triggers for interfaces
    • #1669: [java] NullAssignment - FP with ternay and null as constructor argument
    • #1899: [java] Recognize @SuppressWanings(“fallthrough”) for MissingBreakInSwitch
    • #2320: [java] NullAssignment - FP with ternary and null as method argument
    • #2532: [java] AvoidDecimalLiteralsInBigDecimalConstructor can not detect the case new BigDecimal(Expression)
    • #2579: [java] MissingBreakInSwitch detects the lack of break in the last case
    • #2880: [java] CompareObjectsWithEquals - false negative with type res
    • #2893: [java] Remove special cases from rule EmptyCatchBlock
    • #2894: [java] Improve MissingBreakInSwitch
    • #3071: [java] BrokenNullCheck FP with PMD 6.30.0
    • #3087: [java] UnnecessaryBooleanAssertion overlaps with SimplifiableTestAssertion
    • #3100: [java] UseCorrectExceptionLogging FP in 6.31.0
    • #3173: [java] UseProperClassLoader false positive
    • #3351: [java] ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod ignores abstract methods
    • #3400: [java] AvoidUsingOctalValues FN with underscores
    • #4356: [java] Fix NPE in CloseResourceRule
  • java-multithreading
    • #2537: [java] DontCallThreadRun can’t detect the case that call run() in this.run()
    • #2538: [java] DontCallThreadRun can’t detect the case that call run() in foo.bar.run()
    • #2577: [java] UseNotifyAllInsteadOfNotify falsely detect a special case with argument: foo.notify(bar)
  • java-performance
    • #1224: [java] InefficientEmptyStringCheck false negative in anonymous class
    • #2587: [java] AvoidArrayLoops could also check for list copy through iterated List.add()
    • #2712: [java] SimplifyStartsWith false-positive with AssertJ
    • #3486: [java] InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration: Fix NPE
  • kotlin
    • #419: [kotlin] Add support for Kotlin
    • #4389: [kotlin] Update grammar to version 1.8
  • swift
    • #1877: [swift] Feature/swift rules
    • #1882: [swift] UnavailableFunction Swift rule
  • xml
    • #1800: [xml] Unimplement org.w3c.dom.Node from the XmlNodeWrapper

✨ External Contributions

📈 Stats

  • 4416 commits
  • 464 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

25-February-2023 - 6.55.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.55.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

PMD 7 Development

This release is the last planned release of PMD 6. The first version 6.0.0 was released in December 2017. Over the course of more than 5 years we published almost every month a new minor version of PMD 6 with new features and improvements.

Already in November 2018 we started in parallel the development of the next major version 7.0.0, and we are now in the process of finalizing the scope of the major version. We want to release a couple of release candidates before publishing the final version 7.0.0.

We plan to release 7.0.0-rc1 soon. You can see the progress in PMD 7 Tracking Issue #3898.

Java 20 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 20. There are no new standard language features.

PMD supports JEP 433: Pattern Matching for switch (Fourth Preview) and JEP 432: Record Patterns (Second Preview) as preview language features.

In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these language features, you’ll need to enable it via the environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 20-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd --use-version java-20-preview ...

T-SQL support

Thanks to the contribution from Paul Guyot PMD now has CPD support for T-SQL (Transact-SQL).

Being based on a proper Antlr grammar, CPD can:

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #4395: [core] Support environment variable CLASSPATH with pmd.bat under Windows
  • java
    • #4333: [java] Support JDK 20
  • java-errorprone
    • #4393: [java] MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass false-positive for Lombok’s @UtilityClass for classes with non-private fields

API Changes

Go

  • The LanguageModule of Go, that only supports CPD execution, has been deprecated. This language is not fully supported by PMD, so having a language module does not make sense. The functionality of CPD is not affected by this change. The following class has been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0:

Java

  • Support for Java 18 preview language features have been removed. The version “18-preview” is no longer available.
  • The experimental class net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.ast.ASTGuardedPattern has been removed.

External Contributions

  • #4384: [swift] Add more swift 5.x support (#unavailable mainly) - Richard B. (@kenji21)
  • #4390: Add support for T-SQL using Antlr4 lexer - Paul Guyot (@pguyot)
  • #4392: [java] Fix #4393 MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass: Fix false-positive for field-only class - Dawid Ciok (@dawiddc)

Stats

  • 40 commits
  • 11 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

28-January-2023 - 6.54.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.54.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

New report format html-report-v2.xslt

Thanks to @mohan-chinnappan-n a new PMD report format has been added which features a data table with charting functions. It uses an XSLT stylesheet to convert PMD’s XML format into HTML.

See the example report.

Fixed Issues

  • apex-bestpractices
    • #2669: [apex] UnusedLocalVariable false positive in dynamic SOQL
  • core
    • #4026: [cli] Filenames printed as absolute paths in the report despite parameter --short-names
    • #4279: [core] Can not set ruleset property value to empty
    • #4329: [core] Refactor usage of snakeyaml
    • #4340: [core] Allow to filter found matches in CPDReport
  • java
    • #4364: [java] Parsing error with textblock containing quote followed by two backslashes
  • testing
    • #4236: [test] kotest logs look broken

API Changes

PMD CLI

  • PMD now supports a new --relativize-paths-with flag (or short -z), which replaces --short-names. It serves the same purpose: Shortening the pathnames in the reports. However, with the new flag it’s possible to explicitly define one or more pathnames that should be used as the base when creating relative paths. The old flag --short-names is deprecated.

Deprecated APIs

For removal
Internal APIs
Experimental APIs
  • CPDReport has a new method which limited mutation of a given report:
    • filterMatches creates a new CPD report with some matches removed with a given predicate based filter.

External Contributions

  • #4110: [apex] Feature/unused variable bind false positive with dynamic SOQL - Thomas Prouvot (@tprouvot)
  • #4125: [core] New report format html-report-v2.xslt to provide html with datatable and chart features - Mohan Chinnappan - (@mohan-chinnappan-n)
  • #4280: [apex] Deprecate ApexRootNode.getApexVersion - Aaron Hurst (@aaronhurst-google)
  • #4285: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifier - add co.elastic.clients.util.VisibleForTesting as default suppressed annotation - Matthew Luckam (@mluckam)

Stats

  • 107 commits
  • 19 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 27

31-December-2022 - 6.53.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.53.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Modified rules

  • The Java rule UnusedPrivateField has a new property reportForAnnotations. This is a list of fully qualified names of the annotation types that should be reported anyway. If an unused field has any of these annotations, then it is reported. If it has any other annotation, then it is still considered to be used and is not reported.

Deprecated rules

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #4248: [core] Can’t analyze sources in zip files
  • apex-security
    • #4146: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation: Recognize User Mode in SOQL + DML
  • java
    • #4266: [java] PMD fails to process a record with lambda in compact constructor
  • java-bestpractices
    • #4166: [java] UnusedPrivateField doesn’t find annotated unused private fields anymore
    • #4250: [java] WhileLoopWithLiteralBoolean - false negative with complex expressions still occurs in PMD 6.52.0
  • java-design
    • #2127: [java] Deprecate rules ExcessiveClassLength and ExcessiveMethodLength
  • java-errorprone
    • #4164: [java][doc] AvoidAssertAsIdentifier and AvoidEnumAsIdentifier - clarify use case
  • java-multithreading
    • #4210: [java] DoNotUseThreads report duplicate warnings

API Changes

Deprecated APIs

For removal

These classes / APIs have been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0.

External Contributions

  • #4244: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation: user mode and system mode with test cases added - Tarush Singh (@Tarush-Singh35)
  • #4274: [java] Fix finding lambda scope in record compact constructor - kdebski85 (@kdebski85)

Stats

  • 43 commits
  • 17 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 35

26-November-2022 - 6.52.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.52.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

New rules

<rule ref="category/java/design.xml/InvalidJavaBean"/>

Renamed rules

  • The Java rule BeanMembersShouldSerialize has been renamed to NonSerializableClass. It has been revamped to only check for classes that are marked with Serializable and reports each field in it, that is not serializable.

    The property prefix has been deprecated, since in a serializable class all fields have to be serializable regardless of the name.

Modified rules

  • The rule ClassNamingConventions has a new property testClassPattern, which is applied to test classes. By default, test classes should end with the suffix “Test”. Test classes are top-level classes, that either inherit from JUnit 3 TestCase or have at least one method annotated with the Test annotations from JUnit4/5 or TestNG.

  • The property ignoredAnnotations of rule ImmutableField has been deprecated and doesn’t have any effect anymore. Since PMD 6.47.0, the rule only considers fields, that are initialized once and never changed. If the field is just declared but never explicitly initialized, it won’t be reported. That’s the typical case when a framework sets the field value by reflection. Therefore, the property is not needed anymore. If there is a special case where this rule misidentifies fields as immutable, then the rule should be suppressed for these fields explicitly.

Fixed Issues

  • cli
    • #4215: NullPointerException when trying to open designer
  • doc
    • #4207: [doc] List all languages in rule doc
  • java
    • #3643: [java] More parser edge cases
    • #4152: [java] Parse error on array type annotations
  • java-codestyle
    • #2867: [java] Separate pattern for test classes in ClassNamingConventions rule for Java
    • #4201: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifier should consider lombok’s @Value
  • java-design
    • #4175: [java] ImmutableField - deprecate property ignoredAnnotations
    • #4177: [java] New Rule InvalidJavaBean
    • #4188: [java] ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal false positive with Lombok’s @NoArgsConstructor
    • #4189: [java] AbstractClassWithoutAnyMethod should consider lombok’s @AllArgsConstructor
    • #4200: [java] ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal should consider lombok’s @Value
  • java-errorprone
    • #1668: [java] BeanMembersShouldSerialize is extremely noisy
    • #4172: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat false positive on externally formatted strings
    • #4174: [java] MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass does not consider nested builder class
    • #4176: [java] Rename BeanMembersShouldSerialize to NonSerializableClass
    • #4185: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat rule produces a NPE
    • #4224: [java] MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass should consider Lombok’s @UtilityClass
    • #4225: [java] MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass should consider Lombok’s @NoArgsConstructor
  • java-performance
    • #4183: [java] AvoidArrayLoops regression: from false negative to false positive with final variables

API Changes

PMD CLI

  • PMD now supports a new --use-version flag, which receives a language-version pair (such as java-8 or apex-54). This supersedes the usage of -language / -l and -version / -v, allowing for multiple versions to be set in a single run. PMD 7 will completely remove support for -language and -version in favor of this new flag.

  • Support for -V is being deprecated in favor of --verbose in preparation for PMD 7. In PMD 7, -v will enable verbose mode and -V will show the PMD version for consistency with most Unix/Linux tools.

  • Support for -min is being deprecated in favor of --minimum-priority for consistency with most Unix/Linux tools, where -min would be equivalent to -m -i -n.

CPD CLI

  • CPD now supports using -d or --dir as an alias to --files, in favor of consistency with PMD. PMD 7 will remove support for --files in favor of these new flags.

Linux run.sh parameters

  • Using run.sh cpdgui will now warn about it being deprecated. Use run.sh cpd-gui instead.

  • The old designer (run.sh designerold) is completely deprecated and will be removed in PMD 7. Switch to the new JavaFX designer: run.sh designer.

  • The old visual AST viewer (run.sh bgastviewer) is completely deprecated and will be removed in PMD 7. Switch to the new JavaFX designer: run.sh designer for a visual tool, or use run.sh ast-dump for a text-based alternative.

Deprecated API

External Contributions

  • #4184: [java][doc] TestClassWithoutTestCases - fix small typo in description - Valery Yatsynovich (@valfirst)
  • #4198: [doc] Add supported CPD languages - Jeroen van Wilgenburg (@jvwilge)
  • #4202: [java] Fix #4200 and #4201: ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal, CommentDefaultAccessModifier: Exclude lombok @Value annotation - Lynn (@LynnBroe)
  • #4205: [doc] Clarify Scala support (no built-in rules) - Eldrick Wega (@Eldrick19)
  • #4226: [visualforce] Replace uses of Jorje types in pmd-visualforce - Aaron Hurst (@aaronhurst-google)
  • #4227: [java] Fix #4225 MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass: Exclude lombok’s @NoArgsConstructor annotation - Lynn (@LynnBroe)
  • #4228: [java] Fix #4224 MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass: Exclude lombok’s UtilityClass - Lynn (@LynnBroe)
  • #4232: [doc] Fixing typos - Andreas Deininger (@deining)

Stats

  • 96 commits
  • 40 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

29-October-2022 - 6.51.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.51.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

New Rules

<rule ref="category/apex/bestpractices.xml/ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveRunAs"/>

The rule is part of the quickstart.xml ruleset.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule TestClassWithoutTestCases has a new property testClassPattern. This is used to detect empty test classes by name. Previously this rule could only detect empty JUnit3 test cases properly. To switch back to the old behavior, this property can be set to an empty value which disables the test class detection by pattern.

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #4149: [apex] New rule: ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveRunAs
  • doc
    • #4144: [doc] Update docs to reflect supported languages
    • #4163: [doc] Broken links on page “Architecture Decisions”
  • java-bestpractices
    • #4140: [java] [doc] AccessorClassGeneration violations hidden with Java 11
  • java-codestyle
    • #4139: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName FP when the same simple class name exists in the current package
  • java-documentation
    • #4141: [java] UncommentedEmptyConstructor FP when constructor annotated with @Autowired
  • java-performance
    • #1167: [java] AvoidArrayLoops false positive on double assignment
    • #2080: [java] StringToString rule false-positive with field access
    • #2692: [java] [doc] AvoidArrayLoops flags copy assignment in same array as sub-optimal
    • #3437: [java] StringToString doesn’t trigger on Bar.class.getSimpleName().toString()
    • #3681: [java] StringToString doesn’t trigger on string literals
    • #3847: [java] AvoidArrayLoops should consider final variables
    • #3977: [java] StringToString false-positive with local method name confusion
    • #4091: [java] AvoidArrayLoops false negative with do-while loops
    • #4148: [java] UseArrayListInsteadOfVector ignores Vector when other classes are imported
  • java-errorprone
    • #929: [java] Inconsistent results with TestClassWithoutTestCases
    • #2636: [java] TestClassWithoutTestCases false positive with JUnit5 ParameterizedTest
  • javascript
    • #4165: [javascript] InaccurateNumericLiteral underscore separator notation false positive

API Changes

No changes.

External Contributions

  • #4142: [java] fix #4141 Update UncommentedEmptyConstructor - ignore @Autowired annotations - Lynn (@LynnBroe)
  • #4147: [java] Added support for Do-While for AvoidArrayLoops - Yasar Shaikh (@yasarshaikh)
  • #4150: [apex] New rule ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveRunAs #4149 - Thomas Prouvot (@tprouvot)

Stats

  • 63 commits
  • 28 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

30-September-2022 - 6.50.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.50.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Lua now supports additionally Luau

This release of PMD adds support for Luau, a gradually typed language derived from Lua. This means, that the Lua language in PMD can now parse both Lua and Luau.

Modified rules

  • The Java rule UnusedPrivateField now ignores private fields, if the fields are annotated with any annotation or the enclosing class has any annotation. Annotations often enable a framework (such as dependency injection, mocking or e.g. Lombok) which use the fields by reflection or other means. This usage can’t be detected by static code analysis. Previously these frameworks where explicitly allowed by listing their annotations in the property “ignoredAnnotations”, but that turned out to be prone of false positive for any not explicitly considered framework. That’s why the property “ignoredAnnotations” has been deprecated for this rule.
  • The Java rule CommentDefaultAccessModifier now by default ignores JUnit5 annotated methods. This behavior can be customized using the property ignoredAnnotations.

Fixed Issues

  • cli
    • #4118: [cli] run.sh designer reports “integer expression expected”
  • core
    • #4116: [core] Missing –file arg in TreeExport CLI example
  • doc
    • #4072: [doc] Add architecture decision records
    • #4109: [doc] Add page for 3rd party rulesets
    • #4124: [doc] Fix typos in Java rule docs
  • java
    • #3431: [java] Add sample java project to regression-tester which uses new language constructs
  • java-bestpractices
    • #4033: [java] UnusedPrivateField - false positive with Lombok @ToString.Include
    • #4037: [java] UnusedPrivateField - false positive with Spring @SpyBean
  • java-codestyle
    • #3859: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifier is triggered in JUnit5 test class
    • #4085: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName false positive when nested and non-nested classes with the same name and in the same package are used together
    • #4133: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName - FP for inner class pkg.ClassA.Foo implementing pkg.Foo
  • java-design
    • #4090: [java] FinalFieldCouldBeStatic false positive with non-static synchronized block (regression in 6.48, worked with 6.47)
  • java-errorprone
    • #1718: [java] ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod false positive when calling super method
    • #2348: [java] ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod occurs when unused overloaded method is defined
    • #4099: [java] ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod should consider method calls with var access
  • scala
    • #4138: [scala] Upgrade scala-library to 2.12.7 / 2.13.9 and scalameta to 4.6.0

API Changes

CPD CLI

  • CPD now supports the --ignore-literal-sequences argument when analyzing Lua code.

Financial Contributions

Many thanks to our sponsors:

External Contributions

  • #4066: [lua] Add support for Luau syntax and skipping literal sequences in CPD - Matt Hargett (@matthargett)
  • #4100: [java] Update UnusedPrivateFieldRule - ignore any annotations - Lynn (@LynnBroe)
  • #4116: [core] Fix missing –file arg in TreeExport CLI example - mohan-chinnappan-n (@mohan-chinnappan-n)
  • #4124: [doc] Fix typos in Java rule docs - Piotrek Żygieło (@pzygielo)
  • #4128: [java] Fix False-positive UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName when nested and non-nest… #4103 - Oleg Andreych (@OlegAndreych)
  • #4130: [ci] GitHub Workflows security hardening - Alex (@sashashura)
  • #4131: [doc] TooFewBranchesForASwitchStatement - Use “if-else” instead of “if-then” - Suvashri (@Suvashri)
  • #4137: [java] Fixes 3859: Exclude junit5 test methods from the commentDefaultAccessModifierRule - Luis Alcantar (@lfalcantar)

Stats

  • 100 commits
  • 26 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 29

31-August-2022 - 6.49.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.49.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #4096: [apex] ApexAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage and ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAsserts: support new Assert class (introduced with Apex v56.0)
  • core
    • #3970: [core] FileCollector.addFile ignores language parameter
  • java-codestyle
    • #4082: [java] UnnecessaryImport false positive for on-demand imports of nested classes

API Changes

Deprecated API

External Contributions

  • #4081: [apex] Remove Jorje leaks outside ast package - @eklimo
  • #4083: [java] UnnecessaryImport false positive for on-demand imports of nested classes (fix for #4082) - @abyss638
  • #4092: [apex] Implement ApexQualifiableNode for ASTUserEnum - @aaronhurst-google
  • #4095: [core] CPD: Added begin and end token to XML reports - @pacvz
  • #4097: [apex] ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAssertsRule: Support new Assert class (Apex v56.0) - @tprouvot
  • #4104: [doc] Add MegaLinter in the list of integrations - @nvuillam

Stats

  • 49 commits
  • 10 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 32

30-July-2022 - 6.48.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.48.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Java 19 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 19. There are no new standard language features.

PMD supports JEP 427: Pattern Matching for switch (Third Preview) and JEP 405: Record Patterns (Preview) as preview language features.

In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these language features, you’ll need to enable it via the environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 19-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd -language java -version 19-preview ...

Note: Support for Java 17 preview language features have been removed. The version “17-preview” is no longer available.

Gherkin support

Thanks to the contribution from Anne Brouwers PMD now has CPD support for the Gherkin language. It is used to defined test cases for the Cucumber testing tool for behavior-driven development.

Being based on a proper Antlr grammar, CPD can:

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #4056: [apex] ApexSOQLInjection: Add support count query
  • core
    • #3796: [core] CPD should also provide a --debug flag
    • #4021: [core] CPD: Add total number of tokens to XML reports
    • #4031: [core] If report is written to stdout, stdout should not be closed
    • #4051: [doc] Additional rulesets are not listed in documentation
    • #4053: [core] Allow building PMD under Java 18+
  • java
    • #4015: [java] Support JDK 19
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3455: [java] WhileLoopWithLiteralBoolean - false negative with complex expressions
  • java-design
    • #3729: [java] TooManyMethods ignores “real” methods which are named like getters or setters
    • #3949: [java] FinalFieldCouldBeStatic - false negative with unnecessary parenthesis
  • java-performance
    • #3625: [java] AddEmptyString - false negative with empty var
  • lua
    • #4061: [lua] Fix several related Lua parsing issues found when using CPD
  • test
    • #3302: [test] Improve xml test schema
    • #3758: [test] Move pmd-test to java 8
    • #3976: [test] Extract xml schema module

API Changes

CPD CLI

  • CPD has a new CLI option --debug. This option has the same behavior as in PMD. It enables more verbose logging output.

Rule Test Framework

  • The module “pmd-test”, which contains support classes to write rule tests, now requires Java 8. If you depend on this module for testing your own custom rules, you’ll need to make sure to use at least Java 8.
  • The new module “pmd-test-schema” contains now the XSD schema and the code to parse the rule test XML files. The schema has been extracted in order to easily share it with other tools like the Rule Designer or IDE plugins.
  • Test schema changes:
    • The attribute isRegressionTest of test-code is deprecated. The new attribute disabled should be used instead for defining whether a rule test should be skipped or not.
    • The attributes reinitializeRule and useAuxClasspath of test-code are deprecated and assumed true. They will not be replaced.
    • The new attribute focused of test-code allows disabling all tests except the focused one temporarily.
  • More information about the rule test framework can be found in the documentation: Testing your rules

Deprecated API

  • The experimental Java AST class ASTGuardedPattern has been deprecated and will be removed. It was introduced for Java 17 and Java 18 Preview as part of pattern matching for switch, but it is no longer supported with Java 19 Preview.
  • The interface CPDRenderer is deprecated. For custom CPD renderers the new interface CPDReportRenderer should be used.
  • The class TestDescriptor is deprecated, replaced with RuleTestDescriptor.
  • Many methods of RuleTst have been deprecated as internal API.

Experimental APIs

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

Financial Contributions

Many thanks to our sponsors:

External Contributions

Stats

  • 102 commits
  • 26 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 35

25-June-2022 - 6.47.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.47.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #3999: [cli] All files are analyzed despite parameter --file-list
    • #4009: [core] Cannot build PMD with Temurin 17
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3824: [java] UnusedPrivateField: Do not flag fields annotated with @Version
    • #3825: [java] UnusedPrivateField: Do not flag fields annotated with @Id or @EmbeddedId
  • java-design
    • #3823: [java] ImmutableField: Do not flag fields in @Entity
    • #3981: [java] ImmutableField reports fields annotated with @Value (Spring)
    • #3998: [java] ImmutableField reports fields annotated with @Captor (Mockito)
    • #4004: [java] ImmutableField reports fields annotated with @GwtMock (GwtMockito) and @Spy (Mockito)
    • #4008: [java] ImmutableField not reporting fields that are only initialized in the declaration
    • #4011: [java] ImmutableField: Do not flag fields annotated with @Inject
    • #4020: [java] ImmutableField reports fields annotated with @FindBy and @FindBys (Selenium)
  • java-errorprone
    • #3936: [java] AvoidFieldNameMatchingMethodName should consider enum class
    • #3937: [java] AvoidDuplicateLiterals - uncompilable test cases

API Changes

No changes.

External Contributions

  • #3985: [java] Fix false negative problem about Enum in AvoidFieldNameMatchingMethodName #3936 - @Scrsloota
  • #3993: [java] AvoidDuplicateLiterals - Add the method “buz” definition to test cases - @dalizi007
  • #4002: [java] ImmutableField - Ignore fields annotated with @Value (Spring) or @Captor (Mockito) - @jjlharrison
  • #4003: [java] UnusedPrivateField - Ignore fields annotated with @Id/@EmbeddedId/@Version (JPA) or @Mock/@Spy/@MockBean (Mockito/Spring) - @jjlharrison
  • #4006: [doc] Fix eclipse plugin update site URL - @shiomiyan
  • #4010: [core] Bump kotlin to version 1.7.0 - @maikelsteneker

Stats

  • 45 commits
  • 23 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 27

28-May-2022 - 6.46.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.46.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

CLI improvements

The PMD CLI now allows repeating the --dir (-d) and --rulesets (-R) options, as well as providing several space-separated arguments to either of them. For instance:

pmd -d src/main/java src/test/java -R rset1.xml -R rset2.xml

This also allows globs to be used on the CLI if your shell supports shell expansion. For instance, the above can be written

pmd -d src/*/java -R rset*.xml

Please use theses new forms instead of using comma-separated lists as argument to these options.

C# Improvements

When executing CPD on C# sources, the option --ignore-annotations is now supported as well. It ignores C# attributes when detecting duplicated code. This option can also be enabled via the CPD GUI. See #3974 for details.

New Rules

This release ships with 2 new Java rules.

  • EmptyControlStatement reports many instances of empty things, e.g. control statements whose body is empty, as well as empty initializers.

    EmptyControlStatement also works for empty for and do loops, while there were previously no corresponding rules.

    This new rule replaces the rules EmptyFinallyBlock, EmptyIfStmt, EmptyInitializer, EmptyStatementBlock, EmptySwitchStatements, EmptySynchronizedBlock, EmptyTryBlock, and EmptyWhileStmt.

<rule ref="category/java/codestyle.xml/EmptyControlStatement"/>

The rule is part of the quickstart.xml ruleset.

  • UnnecessarySemicolon reports semicolons that are unnecessary (so called “empty statements” and “empty declarations”).

    This new rule replaces the rule EmptyStatementNotInLoop.

<rule ref="category/java/codestyle.xml/UnnecessarySemicolon"/>

The rule is part of the quickstart.xml ruleset.

Deprecated Rules

Fixed Issues

  • cli
    • #1445: [core] Allow CLI to take globs as parameters
  • core
    • #2352: [core] Deprecate <lang>-<ruleset> hyphen notation for ruleset references
    • #3787: [core] Internalize some methods in Ant Formatter
    • #3835: [core] Deprecate system properties of CPDCommandLineInterface
    • #3942: [core] common-io path traversal vulnerability (CVE-2021-29425)
  • cs (c#)
    • #3974: [cs] Add option to ignore C# attributes (annotations)
  • go
    • #2752: [go] Error parsing unicode values
  • html
    • #3955: [html] Improvements for handling text and comment nodes
    • #3978: [html] Add additional file extensions htm, xhtml, xht, shtml
  • java
    • #3423: [java] Error processing identifiers with Unicode
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3954: [java] NPE in UseCollectionIsEmptyRule when .size() is called in a record
  • java-design
    • #3874: [java] ImmutableField reports fields annotated with @Autowired (Spring) and @Mock (Mockito)
  • java-errorprone
    • #3096: [java] EmptyStatementNotInLoop FP in 6.30.0 with IfStatement
  • java-performance
    • #3379: [java] UseArraysAsList must ignore primitive arrays
    • #3965: [java] UseArraysAsList false positive with non-trivial loops
  • javascript
    • #2605: [js] Support unicode characters
    • #3948: [js] Invalid operator error for method property in object literal
  • python
    • #2604: [python] Support unicode identifiers

API Changes

Deprecated ruleset references

Ruleset references with the following formats are now deprecated and will produce a warning when used on the CLI or in a ruleset XML file:

  • <lang-name>-<ruleset-name>, eg java-basic, which resolves to rulesets/java/basic.xml
  • the internal release number, eg 600, which resolves to rulesets/releases/600.xml

Use the explicit forms of these references to be compatible with PMD 7.

Deprecated API

  • toString is now deprecated. The format of this method will remain the same until PMD 7. The deprecation is intended to steer users away from relying on this format, as it may be changed in PMD 7.
  • getInputPaths and setInputPaths are now deprecated. A new set of methods have been added, which use lists and do not rely on comma splitting.

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

External Contributions

  • #3961: [java] Fix #3954 - NPE in UseCollectionIsEmptyRule with record - @flyhard
  • #3964: [java] Fix #3874 - ImmutableField: fix mockito/spring false positives - @lukelukes
  • #3974: [cs] Add option to ignore C# attributes (annotations) - @maikelsteneker

Stats

  • 92 commits
  • 30 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

30-April-2022 - 6.45.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.45.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

PMD User Survey

Help shape the future of PMD by telling us how you use it.

Our little survey is still open in case you didn’t participate yet. Please participate in our survey at https://forms.gle/4d8r1a1RDzfixHDc7.

Thank you!

Support for HTML

This version of PMD ships a new language module to support analyzing of HTML. Support for HTML is experimental and might change without notice. The language implementation is not complete yet and the AST doesn’t look well for text nodes and comment nodes and might be changed in the future. You can write your own rules, but we don’t guarantee that the rules work with the next (minor) version of PMD without adjustments.

Please give us feedback about how practical this new language is in discussions. Please report missing features or bugs as new issues.

New rules

  • The HTML rule AvoidInlineStyles finds elements which use a style attribute. In order to help maintaining a webpage it is considered good practice to separate content and styles. Instead of inline styles one should use CSS files and classes.
    <rule ref="category/html/bestpractices.xml/AvoidInlineStyles" />
  • The HTML rule UnnecessaryTypeAttribute finds “link” and “script” elements which still have a “type” attribute. This is not necessary anymore since modern browsers automatically use CSS and JavaScript.
      <rule ref="category/html/bestpractices.xml/UnnecessaryTypeAttribute" />
  • The HTML rule UseAltAttributeForImages finds “img” elements without an “alt” attribute. An alternate text should always be provided in order to help screen readers.
      <rule ref="category/html/bestpractices.xml/UseAltAttributeForImages" />

Modified rules

  • The Java rule UnusedPrivateField has a new property ignoredFieldNames. The default ignores serialization-specific fields (eg serialVersionUID). The property can be used to ignore more fields based on their name. Note that the rule used to ignore fields named IDENT, but doesn’t anymore (add this value to the property to restore the old behaviour).

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #3792: [core] Allow to filter violations in Report
    • #3881: [core] SARIF renderer depends on platform default encoding
    • #3882: [core] Fix AssertionError about exhaustive switch
    • #3884: [core] XML report via ant task contains XML header twice
    • #3896: [core] Fix ast-dump CLI when reading from stdin
  • doc
    • #2505: [doc] Improve side bar to show release date
  • java
    • #3068: [java] Some tests should not depend on real rules
    • #3889: [java] Catch LinkageError in UselessOverridingMethodRule
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3910: [java] UnusedPrivateField - Allow the ignored fieldnames to be configurable
    • #1185: [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly false positive with field access
    • #1474: [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly false positive with method call
    • #3879 [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly reports duplicated violation
    • #3929: [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly should report the assignment rather than formal parameter
  • java-design
    • #3603: [java] SimplifiedTernary: no violation for ‘condition ? true : false’ case
  • java-performance
    • #3867: [java] UseArraysAsList with method call
  • plsql
    • #3687: [plsql] Parsing exception EXECUTE IMMEDIATE l_sql BULK COLLECT INTO statement
    • #3706: [plsql] Parsing exception CURSOR statement with parenthesis groupings

API Changes

Experimental APIs

  • Report has two new methods which allow limited mutations of a given report:
    • Report#filterViolations creates a new report with some violations removed with a given predicate based filter.
    • Report#union can combine two reports into a single new Report.
  • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.Predicate will be replaced in PMD7 with the standard Predicate interface from java8.
  • The module pmd-html is entirely experimental right now. Anything in the package net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.html should be used cautiously.

External Contributions

  • #3883: [doc] Improve side bar by Adding Release Date - @jasonqiu98
  • #3910: [java] UnusedPrivateField - Allow the ignored fieldnames to be configurable - @laoseth
  • #3928: [plsql] Fix plsql parsing error in parenthesis groups - @LiGaOg
  • #3935: [plsql] Fix parser exception in EXECUTE IMMEDIATE BULK COLLECT #3687 - @Scrsloota
  • #3938: [java] Modify SimplifiedTernary to meet the missing case #3603 - @VoidxHoshi
  • #3943: chore: Set permissions for GitHub actions - @naveensrinivasan

Stats

  • 97 commits
  • 31 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 33

27-March-2022 - 6.44.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.44.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

PMD User Survey

Help shape the future of PMD by telling us how you use it.

Please participate in our survey at https://forms.gle/4d8r1a1RDzfixHDc7.

Thank you!

Java 18 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 18. There are no new standard language features.

PMD also supports JEP 420: Pattern Matching for switch (Second Preview) as a preview language feature. In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these language features, you’ll need to enable it via the environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 18-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd -language java -version 18-preview ...

Note: Support for Java 16 preview language features have been removed. The version “16-preview” is no longer available.

Better XML XPath support

The new rule class DomXPathRule is intended to replace usage of the XPathRule for XML rules. This rule executes the XPath query in a different way, which sticks to the XPath specification. This means the expression is interpreted the same way in PMD as in all other XPath development tools that stick to the standard. You can for instance test the expression in an online XPath editor.

Prefer using this class to define XPath rules: replace the value of the class attribute with net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.xml.rule.DomXPathRule like so:

<rule name="MyXPathRule"
      language="xml"
      message="A message"
      class="net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.xml.rule.DomXPathRule">

      <properties>
        <property name="xpath">
            <value><![CDATA[
            /a/b/c[@attr = "5"]
            ]]></value>
        </property>
        <!-- Note: the property "version" is ignored, remove it. The query is XPath 2. -->
      </properties>
</rule>

The rule is more powerful than XPathRule, as it can now handle XML namespaces, comments and processing instructions. Please refer to the Javadoc of DomXPathRule for information about the differences with XPathRule and examples.

XPathRule is still perfectly supported for all other languages, including Apex and Java.

New XPath functions

The new XPath functions pmd:startLine, pmd:endLine, pmd:startColumn, and pmd:endColumn are now available in XPath rules for all languages. They replace the node attributes @BeginLine, @EndLine and such. These attributes will be deprecated in a future release.

Please refer to the documentation of these functions for more information, including usage samples.

Note that the function pmd:endColumn returns an exclusive index, while the attribute @EndColumn is inclusive. This is for forward compatibility with PMD 7, which uses exclusive end indices.

New programmatic API

This release introduces a new programmatic API to replace the inflexible PMD class. Programmatic execution of PMD should now be done with a PMDConfiguration and a PmdAnalysis, for instance:

PMDConfiguration config = new PMDConfiguration();
config.setDefaultLanguageVersion(LanguageRegistry.findLanguageByTerseName("java").getVersion("11"));
config.setInputPaths("src/main/java");
config.prependAuxClasspath("target/classes");
config.setMinimumPriority(RulePriority.HIGH);
config.addRuleSet("rulesets/java/quickstart.xml");
config.setReportFormat("xml");
config.setReportFile("target/pmd-report.xml");

try (PmdAnalysis pmd = PmdAnalysis.create(config)) {
    // note: don't use `config` once a PmdAnalysis has been created.
    // optional: add more rulesets
    pmd.addRuleSet(pmd.newRuleSetLoader().loadFromResource("custom-ruleset.xml"));
    // optional: add more files
    pmd.files().addFile(Paths.get("src", "main", "more-java", "ExtraSource.java"));
    // optional: add more renderers
    pmd.addRenderer(renderer);

    // or just call PMD
    pmd.performAnalysis();
}

The PMD class still supports methods related to CLI execution: runPmd and main. All other members are now deprecated for removal. The CLI itself remains compatible, if you run PMD via command-line, no action is required on your part.

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #3817: [apex] Add designer bindings to display main attributes
  • apex-performance
    • #3773: [apex] EagerlyLoadedDescribeSObjectResult false positives with SObjectField.getDescribe()
  • core
    • #2693: [ci] Add integration tests with real open-source projects
    • #3299: [core] Deprecate system properties of PMDCommandLineInterface
  • java
    • #3809: [java] Support JDK 18
  • doc
    • #2504: [doc] Improve “Edit me on github” button
    • #3812: [doc] Documentation website table of contents broken on pages with many subheadings
  • java-design
    • #3850: [java] ImmutableField - false negative when field assigned in constructor conditionally
    • #3851: [java] ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal - false negative when a compilation unit contains two class declarations
  • xml
    • #2766: [xml] XMLNS prefix is not pre-declared in xpath query
    • #3863: [xml] Make XPath rules work exactly as in the XPath spec

API Changes

Deprecated API

Experimental APIs

External Contributions

  • #3773: [apex] EagerlyLoadedDescribeSObjectResult false positives with SObjectField.getDescribe() - @filiprafalowicz
  • #3811: [doc] Improve “Edit me on github” button - @btjiong
  • #3836: [doc] Make TOC scrollable when too many subheadings - @JerritEic

Stats

  • 124 commits
  • 23 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 29

26-February-2022 - 6.43.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.43.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #3427: [core] Stop printing CLI usage text when exiting due to invalid parameters
    • #3768: [core] SARIF formatter reports multiple locations when it should report multiple results
  • doc
    • #2502: [doc] Add floating table-of-contents (toc) on the right
    • #3807: [doc] Document Ant Task parameter threads
  • java
    • #3698: [java] Parsing error with try-with-resources and qualified resource
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3605: [java] SwitchStmtsShouldHaveDefault triggered when default case is present
  • java-codestyle
    • #278: [java] ConfusingTernary should treat != null as positive condition
  • java-performance
    • #3374: [java] UseStringBufferForStringAppends: Wrong example in documentation
  • misc
    • #3759: [lang-test] Upgrade dokka maven plugin to 1.4.32
  • plsql
    • #3746: [plsql] Parsing exception “Less than or equal to/Greater than or equal to” operators in DML statements

API Changes

Deprecated API

Some API deprecations were performed in core PMD classes, to improve compatibility with PMD 7.

  • Report: the constructor and other construction methods like addViolation or createReport
  • RuleContext: all constructors, getters and setters. A new set of stable methods, matching those in PMD 7, was added to replace the addViolation overloads of AbstractRule. In PMD 7, RuleContext will be the API to report violations, and it can already be used as such in PMD 6.
  • The field configuration is unused and will be removed.

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

Changed API

It is now forbidden to report a violation:

  • With a null node
  • With a null message
  • With a null set of format arguments (prefer a zero-length array)

Note that the message is set from the XML rule declaration, so this is only relevant if you instantiate rules manually.

RuleContext now requires setting the current rule before calling apply. This is done automatically by RuleSet#apply and such. Creating and configuring a RuleContext manually is strongly advised against, as the lifecycle of RuleContext will change drastically in PMD 7.

External Contributions

Stats

  • 49 commits
  • 22 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 27

29-January-2022 - 6.42.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.42.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Javascript: Rhino updated to latest version 1.7.14

Rhino, the implementation of JavaScript we use for parsing JavaScript code, has been updated to the latest version 1.7.14. Now language features like template strings can be parsed. However Rhino does not support all features of the latest EcmaScript standard.

New rules

  • The new Java rule FinalParameterInAbstractMethod detects parameters that are declared as final in interfaces or abstract methods. Declaring the parameters as final is useless because the implementation may choose to not respect it.
    <rule ref="category/java/codestyle.xml/FinalParameterInAbstractMethod" />

The rule is part of the quickstart.xml ruleset.

Modified rules

  • The Apex rule ApexDoc has a new property reportProperty. If set to false (default is true if unspecified) doesn’t report missing ApexDoc comments on properties. It allows you to enforce ApexDoc comments for classes and methods without requiring them for properties.

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #3328: [core] designer.bat errors when JAVAFX_HOME contains spaces
  • java
    • #3698: [java] Error resolving Symbol Table
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3209: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod false positive with static method and cast expression
    • #3468: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod false positive when outer class calls private static method on inner class
  • java-design
    • #3679: [java] Make FinalFieldCouldBeStatic detect constant variable
  • java-errorprone
    • #3644: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat: false positives with logstash structured logging
    • #3686: [java] ReturnEmptyCollectionRatherThanNull - false negative with conditioned returns
    • #3701: [java] MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass false positive with method inner classes
    • #3721: [java] ReturnEmptyCollectionRatherThanNull - false positive with stream and lambda
  • java-performance
    • #3492: [java] UselessStringValueOf: False positive when there is no initial String to append to
    • #3639: [java] UseStringBufferLength: false negative with empty string variable
    • #3712: [java] InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration false positive with StringBuilder.setLength(0)
  • javascript
    • #3703: [javascript] Error - no Node adapter class registered for XmlPropRef

API Changes

No changes.

External Contributions

Stats

  • 88 commits
  • 35 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 62

27-November-2021 - 6.41.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.41.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

GitHub Action for PMD

PMD now has its own official GitHub Action: GitHub Action for PMD. It can execute PMD with your own ruleset against your project. It creates a SARIF report which is uploaded as a build artifact. Furthermore the build can be failed based on the number of violations.

Feedback and pull requests are welcome at https://github.com/pmd/pmd-github-action.

Last release in 2021

This minor release will be the last one in 2021. The next release is scheduled to be end of January 2022.

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #2954: Create GitHub Action for PMD
    • #3424: [core] Migrate CLI to using GNU-style long options
    • #3425: [core] Add a --version CLI option
    • #3593: [core] Ant task fails with Java17
    • #3635: [ci] Update sample projects for regression tester
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3595: [java] PrimitiveWrapperInstantiation: no violation on ‘new Boolean(val)’
    • #3613: [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly doesn’t consider nested classes
    • #3614: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert doesn’t consider nested classes
    • #3618: [java] UnusedFormalParameter doesn’t consider anonymous classes
    • #3630: [java] MethodReturnsInternalArray doesn’t consider anonymous classes
  • java-design
    • #3620: [java] SingularField doesn’t consider anonymous classes defined in non-private fields
  • java-errorprone
    • #3624: [java] TestClassWithoutTestCases reports wrong classes in a file
  • java-performance
    • #3491: [java] UselessStringValueOf: False positive when valueOf(char [], int, int) is used

API Changes

Command Line Interface

The command line options for PMD and CPD now use GNU-syle long options format. E.g. instead of -rulesets the preferred usage is now --rulesets. Alternatively one can still use the short option -R. Some options also have been renamed to a more consistent casing pattern at the same time (--fail-on-violation instead of -failOnViolation). The old single-dash options are still supported but are deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7. This change makes the command line interface more consistent within PMD and also less surprising compared to other cli tools.

The changes in detail for PMD:

old option new option
-rulesets --rulesets (or -R)
-uri --uri
-dir --dir (or -d)
-filelist --file-list
-ignorelist --ignore-list
-format --format (or -f)
-debug --debug
-verbose --verbose
-help --help
-encoding --encoding
-threads --threads
-benchmark --benchmark
-stress --stress
-shortnames --short-names
-showsuppressed --show-suppressed
-suppressmarker --suppress-marker
-minimumpriority --minimum-priority
-property --property
-reportfile --report-file
-force-language --force-language
-auxclasspath --aux-classpath
-failOnViolation --fail-on-violation
--failOnViolation --fail-on-violation
-norulesetcompatibility --no-ruleset-compatibility
-cache --cache
-no-cache --no-cache

The changes in detail for CPD:

old option new option
--failOnViolation --fail-on-violation
-failOnViolation --fail-on-violation
--filelist --file-list

External Contributions

Stats

  • 80 commits
  • 23 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

30-October-2021 - 6.40.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.40.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Updated Apex Support

  • The Apex language support has been bumped to version 54.0 (Spring ‘22).

New rules

    <rule ref="category/apex/performance.xml/EagerlyLoadedDescribeSObjectResult" />

Modified rules

  • The Apex rule ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAsserts has a new property additionalAssertMethodPattern. When specified the pattern is evaluated against each invoked method name to determine whether it represents a test assertion in addition to the standard names.

  • The Apex rule ApexDoc has a new property reportMissingDescription. If set to false (default is true if unspecified) doesn’t report an issue if the @description tag is missing. This is consistent with the ApexDoc dialect supported by derivatives such as SfApexDoc and also with analogous documentation tools for other languages, e.g., JavaDoc, ESDoc/JSDoc, etc.

  • The Apex rule ApexCRUDViolation has a couple of new properties: These allow specification of regular-expression-based patterns for additional methods that should be considered valid for pre-CRUD authorization beyond those offered by the system Apex checks and ESAPI, e.g., sirono-common’s AuthorizationUtil class. Two new properties have been added per-CRUD operation, one to specify the naming pattern for a method that authorizes that operation and another to specify the argument passed to that method that contains the SObjectType instance of the type being authorized. Here is an example of these new properties:

    <rule ref="category/apex/security.xml/ApexCRUDViolation" message="...">
  <priority>3</priority>
  <properties>
    <property name="createAuthMethodPattern" value="AuthorizationUtil\.(is|assert)(Createable|Upsertable)"/>
    <!--
     There's one of these properties for each operation, and the default value is 0 so this is technically
     superfluous, but it's included it here for example purposes.
     -->
    <property name="createAuthMethodTypeParamIndex" value="0"/>
    <property name="readAuthMethodPattern" value="AuthorizationUtil\.(is|assert)Accessible"/>
    <property name="updateAuthMethodPattern" value="AuthorizationUtil\.(is|assert)(Updateable|Upsertable)"/>
    <property name="deleteAuthMethodPattern" value="AuthorizationUtil\.(is|assert)Deletable"/>
    <property name="undeleteAuthMethodPattern" value="AuthorizationUtil\.(is|assert)Undeletable"/>
    <property name="mergeAuthMethodPattern" value="AuthorizationUtil\.(is|assert)Mergeable"/>
  </properties>
</rule>

  • The Apex rule EmptyStatementBlock has two new properties:

    Setting reportEmptyPrivateNoArgConstructor to false ignores empty private no-arg constructors that are commonly used in singleton pattern implementations and utility classes in support of prescribed best practices.

    Setting reportEmptyVirtualMethod to false ignores empty virtual methods that are commonly used in abstract base classes as default no-op implementations when derived classes typically only override a subset of virtual methods.

    By default, both properties are true to not change the default behaviour of this rule.

  • The Apex rule EmptyCatchBlock has two new properties modeled after the analogous Java rule:

    The allowCommentedBlocks property, when set to true (defaults to false), ignores empty blocks containing comments, e.g.:

    try {
    doSomethingThatThrowsAnExpectedException();
    System.assert(false, 'Expected to catch an exception.');
} catch (Exception e) {
    // Expected
}

    The allowExceptionNameRegex property is a regular expression for exception variable names for which empty catch blocks should be ignored by this rule. For example, using the default property value of ^(ignored|expected)$, the following empty catch blocks will not be reported:

    try {
    doSomethingThatThrowsAnExpectedException();
    System.assert(false, 'Expected to catch an exception.');
} catch (IllegalStateException ignored) {
} catch (NumberFormatException expected) {
}

  • The Apex rule OneDeclarationPerLine has a new property reportInForLoopInitializer: If set to false (default is true if unspecified) doesn’t report an issue for multiple declarations in a for loop’s initializer section. This is support the common idiom of one declaration for the loop variable and another for the loop bounds condition, e.g.,

    for (Integer i = 0, numIterations = computeNumIterations(); i < numIterations; i++) {
}

  • The Java rule ClassNamingConventions uses a different default value of the property utilityClassPattern: This rule was detecting utility classes by default since PMD 6.3.0 and enforcing the naming convention that utility classes has to be suffixed with Util or Helper or Constants. However this turned out to be not so useful as a default configuration, as there is no standard naming convention for utility classes.

    With PMD 6.40.0, the default value of this property has been changed to [A-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]* (Pascal case), effectively disabling the special handling of utility classes. This is the same default pattern used for concrete classes.

    This means, that the feature to enforce a naming convention for utility classes is now a opt-in feature and can be enabled on demand.

    To use the old behaviour, the property needs to be configured as follows:

    <rule ref="category/java/codestyle.xml/ClassNamingConventions">
    <properties>
        <property name="utilityClassPattern" value="[A-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]+(Utils?|Helper|Constants)" />
    </properties>
</rule>

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #1089: [apex] ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAsserts: Test asserts in other methods not detected
    • #1090: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation: checks not detected if done in another method
    • #3532: [apex] Promote usage of consistent getDescribe() info
    • #3566: [apex] ApexDoc rule should not require “@description”
    • #3568: [apex] EmptyStatementBlock: should provide options to ignore empty private constructors and empty virtual methods
    • #3569: [apex] EmptyCatchBlock: should provide an option to ignore empty catch blocks in test methods
    • #3570: [apex] OneDeclarationPerLine: should provide an option to ignore multiple declarations in a for loop initializer
    • #3576: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation should provide an option to specify additional patterns for methods that encapsulate authorization checks
    • #3579: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation: false negative with undelete
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3542: [java] MissingOverride: False negative for enum method
  • java-codestyle
    • #1595: [java] Discuss default for utility classes in ClassNamingConventions
    • #3563: [java] The ClassNamingConventionsRule false-positive’s on the class name “Constants”
  • java-errorprone
    • #3560: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat: False positive with message and exception in a block inside a lambda
  • java-performance
    • #2364: [java] AddEmptyString false positive in annotation value
  • java-security
    • #3368: [java] HardcodedCryptoKey false negative with variable assignments

API Changes

Experimental APIs

  • The interface ASTCommentContainer has been added to the Apex AST. It provides a way to check whether a node contains at least one comment. Currently this is only implemented for ASTCatchBlockStatement and used by the rule EmptyCatchBlock. This information is also available via XPath attribute @ContainsComment.

External Contributions

  • #3538: [apex] New rule EagerlyLoadedDescribeSObjectResult - Jonathan Wiesel
  • #3549: [java] Ignore AddEmptyString rule in annotations - Stanislav Myachenkov
  • #3561: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat: False positive with message and exception in a block inside a lambda - Nicolas Filotto
  • #3565: [doc] Fix resource leak due to Files.walk - lujiefsi
  • #3571: [apex] Fix for #1089 - Added new configuration property additionalAssertMethodPattern to ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAssertsRule - Scott Wells
  • #3572: [apex] Fix for #3566 - Added new configuration property reportMissingDescription to ApexDocRule - Scott Wells
  • #3573: [apex] Fix for #3568 - Added new configuration properties reportEmptyPrivateNoArgConstructor and reportEmptyVirtualMethod to EmptyStatementBlock - Scott Wells
  • #3574: [apex] Fix for #3569 - Added new configuration properties allowCommentedBlocks and allowExceptionNameRegex to EmptyCatchBlock - Scott Wells
  • #3575: [apex] Fix for #3570 - Added new configuration property reportInForLoopInitializer to OneDeclarationPerLine - Scott Wells
  • #3577: [apex] Fix for #3576 - Added new configuration properties *AuthMethodPattern and *AuthMethodTypeParamIndex to ApexCRUDViolation rule - Scott Wells
  • #3578: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation: Documentation changes for #3576 - Scott Wells
  • #3580: [doc] Release notes updates for the changes in issue #3569 - Scott Wells
  • #3581: [apex] #3569 - Requested changes for code review feedback - Scott Wells

Stats

  • 72 commits
  • 37 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 34

25-September-2021 - 6.39.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.39.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

All Contributors

PMD follows the All Contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!

See credits for our complete contributors list.

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #3499: [core] Fix XPath rulechain with combined node tests
  • java-errorprone
    • #3493: [java] AvoidAccessibilityAlteration: add tests and fix rule
  • javascript
    • #3516: [javascript] NPE while creating rule violation when specifying explicit line numbers
  • plsql
    • #3487: [plsql] Parsing exception OPEN ref_cursor_name FOR statement
    • #3515: [plsql] Parsing exception SELECT…INTO on Associative Arrays Types

API Changes

No changes.

External Contributions

  • #3516: [javascript] NPE while creating rule violation when specifying explicit line numbers - Kevin Guerra

Stats

  • 37 commits
  • 10 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 27

28-August-2021 - 6.38.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.38.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #3462: [apex] SOQL performed in a for-each loop doesn’t trigger ApexCRUDViolationRule
    • #3484: [apex] ApexCRUDViolationRule maintains state across files
  • core
    • #3446: [core] Allow XPath rules to access the current file name
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3403: [java] MethodNamingConventions junit5TestPattern does not detect parameterized tests

External Contributions

Stats

  • 32 commits
  • 8 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 27

31-July-2021 - 6.37.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.37.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Java 17 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 17. PMD supports JEP 409: Sealed Classes which has been promoted to be a standard language feature of Java 17.

PMD also supports JEP 406: Pattern Matching for switch (Preview) as a preview language feature. In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these language features, you’ll need to enable it via the environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 17-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd -language java -version 17-preview ...

Note: Support for Java 15 preview language features have been removed. The version “15-preview” is no longer available.

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.

New rules

This release ships with 3 new Java rules.

    <rule ref="category/java/bestpractices.xml/PrimitiveWrapperInstantiation" />

The rule is part of the quickstart.xml ruleset.

    <rule ref="category/java/bestpractices.xml/SimplifiableTestAssertion" />

The rule is part of the quickstart.xml ruleset.

    <rule ref="category/java/errorprone.xml/ReturnEmptyCollectionRatherThanNull" />

The rule is part of the quickstart.xml ruleset.

Renamed rules

  • The Java rule MissingBreakInSwitch has been renamed to ImplicitSwitchFallThrough (category error prone) to better reflect the rule’s purpose: The rule finds implicit fall-through cases in switch statements, which are most likely unexpected. The old rule name described only one way how to avoid a fall-through, namely using break but continue, throw and return avoid a fall-through as well. This enables us to improve this rule in the future.

Deprecated rules

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #3201: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation doesn’t report Database class DMLs, inline no-arg object instantiations and inline list initialization
    • #3329: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation doesn’t report SOQL for loops
  • core
    • #1603: [core] Language version comparison
    • #2133: [xml] Allow to check Salesforce XML Metadata using XPath rules
    • #3377: [core] NPE when specifying report file in current directory in PMD CLI
    • #3387: [core] CPD should avoid unnecessary copies when running with –skip-lexical-errors
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2908: [java] Merge Junit assertion simplification rules
    • #3235: [java] UseTryWithResources false positive when closeable is provided as a method argument or class field
  • java-errorprone
    • #3361: [java] Rename rule MissingBreakInSwitch to ImplicitSwitchFallThrough
    • #3382: [java] New rule ReturnEmptyCollectionRatherThanNull
  • java-performance
    • #3420: [java] NPE in InefficientStringBuffering with Records

API Changes

PMD CLI

  • PMD has a new CLI option -force-language. With that a language can be forced to be used for all input files, irrespective of filenames. When using this option, the automatic language selection by extension is disabled and all files are tried to be parsed with the given language. Parsing errors are ignored and unparsable files are skipped.

    This option allows to use the xml language for files, that don’t use xml as extension. See also the examples on PMD CLI reference.

Experimental APIs

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

External Contributions

Stats

  • 82 commits
  • 29 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 35

26-June-2021 - 6.36.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.36.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Improved Incremental Analysis

Incremental Analysis has long helped our users obtain faster analysis results, however, its implementation tended to be too cautious in detecting changes to the runtime and type resolution classpaths, producing more cache invalidations than necessary. We have now improved the heuristics to remove several bogus invalidations, and slightly sped up the cache usage along the way.

PMD will now ignore:

  • Non class files in classpath and jar / zip files being referenced.
  • Changes to the order of file entries within a jar / zip
  • Changes to file metadata within jar / zip (ie: creation and modification time, significant in multi-module / composite build projects where lateral artifacts are frequently recreated)

New rules

  • The new Apex rule AvoidDebugStatements finds usages of System.debug calls. Debug statements contribute to longer transactions and consume Apex CPU time even when debug logs are not being captured. You can try out this rule like so:
    <rule ref="category/apex/performance.xml/AvoidDebugStatements" />
  • The new Apex rule InaccessibleAuraEnabledGetter checks that an AuraEnabled getter is public or global. This is necessary if it is referenced in Lightning components. You can try out this rule like so:
    <rule ref="category/apex/errorprone.xml/InaccessibleAuraEnabledGetter" />

Renamed rules

  • The Java rule BadComparison has been renamed to ComparisonWithNaN to better reflect what the rule actually detects. It now considers usages of Double.NaN or Float.NaN in more cases and fixes false negatives.

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #3307: [apex] Avoid debug statements since it impact performance
    • #3321: [apex] New rule to detect inaccessible AuraEnabled getters (summer ‘21 security update)
    • #3332: [apex] CognitiveComplexity - incorrect increment for “else if”
  • core
    • #2637: [cpd] Error Loading stylesheet cpdhtml.xslt
    • #3323: [core] Adds fullDescription and tags in SARIF report
  • java-bestpractices
    • #957: [java] GuardLogStatement: False positive with compile-time constant arguments
    • #3076: [java] UnusedAssignment reports unused variable when used in increment expr
    • #3114: [java] UnusedAssignment false positive when reporting unused variables
    • #3315: [java] LiteralsFirstInComparisons false positive with two constants
    • #3341: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert should support Junit 5
    • #3340: [java] NullPointerException applying rule GuardLogStatement
  • java-codestyle
    • #3317: [java] Update UnnecessaryImport to recognize usage of imported types in javadoc’s @exception tag
  • java-errorprone
    • #2895: [java] Improve BadComparison and rename to ComparisonWithNaN
    • #3284: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat may examine the value of a different but identically named String variable
    • #3304: [java] NPE in MoreThanOneLoggerRule on a java 16 record
    • #3305: [java] ConstructorCallsOverridableMethodRule IndexOutOfBoundsException on a java16 record
    • #3343: [java] CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable: FN with local classes
  • java-performance
    • #3331: [java] UseArraysAsList false negative with for-each loop
    • #3344: [java] InefficientEmptyStringCheck FN with trim.length on method call

API Changes

No changes.

External Contributions

  • #3276: [apex] Update ApexCRUDViolation and OperationWithLimitsInLoop docs - Jonathan Wiesel
  • #3306: [java] More than one logger rule test null pointer exception - Arnaud Jeansen
  • #3317: [java] Update UnnecessaryImport to recognize usage of imported types in javadoc’s @exception tag - Piotrek Żygieło
  • #3319: [apex] New AvoidDebugStatements rule to mitigate performance impact - Jonathan Wiesel
  • #3320: [java] Fix incorrect increment for “else if” branch in Cognitive Complexity docs - Denis Borovikov
  • #3322: [apex] added rule to detect inaccessible AuraEnabled getters - Philippe Ozil
  • #3323: [core] Adds fullDescription and tags in SARIF report - Clint Chester
  • #3339: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert Tweak assertion definition to avoid false positive with modern JUnit5 - Arnaud Jeansen

Stats

  • 81 commits
  • 36 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

29-May-2021 - 6.35.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.35.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Javascript module now requires at least Java 8

The latest version of Rhino, the implementation of JavaScript we use for parsing JavaScript code, requires at least Java 8. Therefore we decided to upgrade the pmd-javascript module to Java 8 as well. This means that from now on, a Java 8 or later runtime is required in order to analyze JavaScript code. Note that PMD core still only requires Java 7.

New rules

This release ships with 3 new Java rules.

  • JUnit5TestShouldBePackagePrivate enforces the convention that JUnit 5 tests should have minimal visibility. You can try out this rule like so: 
    <rule ref="category/java/bestpractices.xml/JUnit5TestShouldBePackagePrivate" />
  • CognitiveComplexity uses the cognitive complexity metric to find overly complex code. This metric improves on the similar cyclomatic complexity in several ways, for instance, it incentivizes using clearly readable shorthands and idioms. See the rule documentation for more details. You can try out this rule like so: 
    <rule ref="category/java/design.xml/CognitiveComplexity" />
  • MutableStaticState finds non-private static fields that are not final. These fields break encapsulation since these fields can be modified from anywhere within the program. You can try out this rule like so: 
    <rule ref="category/java/design.xml/MutableStaticState" />

Modified rules

  • The Java rule CompareObjectsWithEquals has now a new property typesThatCompareByReference. With that property, you can configure types, that should be whitelisted for comparison by reference. By default, java.lang.Enum and java.lang.Class are allowed, but you could add custom types here. Additionally comparisons against constants are allowed now. This makes the rule less noisy when two constants are compared. Constants are identified by looking for an all-caps identifier.

Deprecated rules

  • The java rule DefaultPackage has been deprecated in favor of CommentDefaultAccessModifier.

    The rule “DefaultPackage” assumes that any usage of package-access is accidental, and by doing so, prohibits using a really fundamental and useful feature of the language.

    To satisfy the rule, you have to make the member public even if it doesn’t need to, or make it protected, which muddies your intent even more if you don’t intend the class to be extended, and may be at odds with other rules like AvoidProtectedFieldInFinalClass.

    The rule CommentDefaultAccessModifier should be used instead. It flags the same thing, but has an escape hatch.

  • The Java rule CloneThrowsCloneNotSupportedException has been deprecated without replacement.

    The rule has no real value as CloneNotSupportedException is a checked exception and therefore you need to deal with it while implementing the clone() method. You either need to declare the exception or catch it. If you catch it, then subclasses can’t throw it themselves explicitly. However, Object.clone() will still throw this exception if the Cloneable interface is not implemented.

    Note, this rule has also been removed from the Quickstart Ruleset (rulesets/java/quickstart.xml).

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #3183: [apex] ApexUnitTestMethodShouldHaveIsTestAnnotation false positive with helper method
    • #3243: [apex] Correct findBoundary when traversing AST
  • core
    • #2639: [core] PMD CLI output file is not created if directory or directories in path don’t exist
    • #3196: [core] Deprecate ThreadSafeReportListener
  • doc
    • #3230: [doc] Remove “Edit me” button for language index pages
  • dist
    • #2466: [dist] Distribution archive doesn’t include all batch scripts
  • java
    • #3269: [java] Fix NPE in MethodTypeResolution
  • java-bestpractices
    • #1175: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod FP with Junit 5 @MethodSource
    • #2219: [java] Document Reasons to Avoid Reassigning Parameters
    • #2737: [java] Fix misleading rule message on rule SwitchStmtsShouldHaveDefault with non-exhaustive enum switch
    • #3236: [java] LiteralsFirstInComparisons should consider constant fields (cont’d)
    • #3239: [java] PMD could enforce non-public methods for Junit5 / Jupiter test methods
    • #3254: [java] AvoidReassigningParameters reports violations on wrong line numbers
  • java-codestyle
    • #2655: [java] UnnecessaryImport false positive for on-demand imports
    • #3206: [java] Deprecate rule DefaultPackage
    • #3262: [java] FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass: false negative with anon classes
    • #3265: [java] MethodArgumentCouldBeFinal: false negatives with interfaces and inner classes
    • #3266: [java] LocalVariableCouldBeFinal: false negatives with interfaces, anon classes
    • #3274: [java] OnlyOneReturn: false negative with anonymous class
    • #3275: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn: false negatives with lambda and anon class
  • java-design
    • #2780: [java] DataClass example from documentation results in false-negative
    • #2987: [java] New Rule: Public and protected static fields must be final
    • #2329: [java] Cognitive complexity rule for Java
  • java-errorprone
    • #3110: [java] Enhance CompareObjectsWithEquals with list of exceptions
    • #3112: [java] Deprecate rule CloneThrowsCloneNotSupportedException
    • #3205: [java] Make CompareObjectWithEquals allow comparing against constants
    • #3248: [java] Documentation is wrong for SingletonClassReturningNewInstance rule
    • #3249: [java] AvoidFieldNameMatchingTypeName: False negative with interfaces
    • #3268: [java] ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod: IndexOutOfBoundsException with annotations
  • java-performance
    • #1438: [java] InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration false positive for initial calculated StringBuilder size
  • javascript
    • #699: [javascript] Update Rhino library to 1.7.13
    • #2081: [javascript] Failing with OutOfMemoryError parsing a Javascript file

API Changes

Deprecated API

External Contributions

Stats

  • 143 commits
  • 53 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 34

24-April-2021 - 6.34.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.34.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

New rules

Modified rules

  • The Apex rule ApexCRUDViolation does not ignore getters anymore and also flags SOQL/SOSL/DML operations without access permission checks in getters. This will produce false positives now for VF getter methods, but we can’t reliably detect, whether a getter is a VF getter or not. In such cases, the violation should be suppressed.

Deprecated rules

Fixed Issues

  • apex-performance
    • #3198: [apex] OperationWithLimitsInLoopRule: Support more limit consuming static method invocations
  • apex-security
    • #3202: [apex] ApexCRUDViolationRule fails to report CRUD violation on COUNT() queries
    • #3210: [apex] ApexCRUDViolationRule false-negative on non-VF getter
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3190: [java] Use StandardCharsets instead of Charset.forName
    • #3224: [java] UnusedAssignment crashes with nested records
  • java-codestyle
    • #3128: [java] New rule UnnecessaryImport, deprecate DuplicateImports, ImportFromSamePackage, UnusedImports
  • java-errorprone
    • #2757: [java] CloseResource: support Lombok’s @Cleanup annotation
    • #3169: [java] CheckSkipResult: NPE when using pattern bindings

API Changes

No changes.

External Contributions

  • #3193: [java] New rule: UseStandardCharsets - Andrea Aime
  • #3198: [apex] OperationWithLimitsInLoopRule: Support more limit consuming static method invocations - Jonathan Wiesel
  • #3211: [apex] ApexCRUDViolationRule: Do not assume method is VF getter to avoid CRUD checks - Jonathan Wiesel
  • #3234: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation: COUNT is indeed CRUD checkable since it exposes data (false-negative) - Jonathan Wiesel

Stats

  • 74 commits
  • 18 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 27

27-March-2021 - 6.33.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.33.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

PLSQL parsing exclusions

The PMD PLSQL parser might not parse every valid PL/SQL code without problems. In order to still use PMD on such files, you can now mark certain lines for exclusion from the parser. More information can be found in the language specific documentation for PLSQL.

Fixed Issues

  • apex-design
    • #3142: [apex] ExcessiveClassLength multiple warning on the same class
  • java
    • #3117: [java] Infinite loop when parsing invalid code nested in lambdas
    • #3145: [java] Parse exception when using “record” as variable name
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3118: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod false positive when passing in lombok.val as argument
    • #3144: [java] GuardLogStatement can have more detailed example
    • #3155: [java] GuardLogStatement: False negative with unguarded method call
    • #3160: [java] MethodReturnsInternalArray does not consider static final fields and fields initialized with empty array
  • java-errorprone
    • #2977: [java] CloseResource: false positive with reassignment detection
    • #3146: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat detection failing when String.format used
    • #3148: [java] CloseResource false positive with Objects.nonNull
    • #3165: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat detection failing when String.format used in a variable
  • java-performance
    • #2427: [java] ConsecutiveLiteralAppend false-positive with builder inside lambda
    • #3152: [java] ConsecutiveLiteralAppends and InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration: FP with switch expressions
  • plsql
    • #195: [plsql] Ampersand ‘&’ causes PMD processing error in sql file - Lexical error in file

External Contributions

  • #3161: [plsql] Add support for lexical parameters in SQL*Plus scripts, allow excluding lines which the parser does not understand - Henning von Bargen
  • #3167: [java] Minor typo in quickstart ruleset - Austin Tice

Stats

  • 49 commits
  • 27 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

27-February-2021 - 6.32.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.32.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Java 16 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 16. PMD supports JEP 394: Pattern Matching for instanceof and JEP 395: Records. Both have been promoted to be a standard language feature of Java 16.

PMD also supports JEP 397: Sealed Classes (Second Preview) as a preview language feature. In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these language features, you’ll need to enable it via the environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 16-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd -language java -version 16-preview ...

Note: Support for Java 14 preview language features have been removed. The version “14-preview” is no longer available.

Modified Rules

  • The Apex rule ApexDoc has two new properties: reportPrivate and reportProtected. Previously the rule only considered public and global classes, methods, and properties. With these properties, you can verify the existence of ApexDoc comments for private and protected methods as well. By default, these properties are disabled to preserve backwards compatible behavior.

Fixed Issues

  • apex-documentation
    • #3075: [apex] ApexDoc should support private access modifier
  • java
    • #3101: [java] NullPointerException when running PMD under JRE 11
  • java-bestpractices
    • #3132: [java] UnusedImports with static imports on subclasses
  • java-errorprone
    • #2716: [java] CompareObjectsWithEqualsRule: False positive with Enums
    • #3089: [java] CloseResource rule throws exception on spaces in property types
    • #3133: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat FP with StringFormattedMessage and ParameterizedMessage
  • plsql
    • #3106: [plsql] ParseException while parsing EXECUTE IMMEDIATE ‘drop database link ‘ || linkname;

API Changes

Experimental APIs

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

  • The protected or public member of the Java rule AvoidUsingHardCodedIPRule are deprecated and considered to be internal API. They will be removed with PMD 7.

External Contributions

Stats

  • 43 commits
  • 21 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 27

30-January-2021 - 6.31.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.31.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

SARIF Format

PMD now supports the Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF) as an additional report format. Just use the command line parameter -format sarif to select it. SARIF is an OASIS standard format for static analysis tools. PMD creates SARIF JSON files in SARIF version 2.1.0. An example report can be found in the documentation in Report formats for PMD.

CPD

  • The C++ module now supports the new option --ignore-literal-sequences, which can be used to avoid detection of some uninteresting clones. This options has been introduced with PMD 6.30.0 for C# and is now available for C++ as well. See #2963.

New Rules

  • The new Apex rule OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcode brings the well known Java rule to Apex. In Apex the same principle applies: equals and hashCode should always be overridden together to ensure collection classes such as Maps and Sets work as expected.

  • The new Visualforce rule VfHtmlStyleTagXss checks for potential XSS problems when using <style> tags on Visualforce pages.

Deprecated rules

  • java-performance
    • AvoidUsingShortType: arithmetic on shorts is not significantly slower than on ints, whereas using shorts may provide significant memory savings in arrays.
    • SimplifyStartsWith: the suggested code transformation has an insignificant performance impact, and decreases readability.

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #2953: [core] Support SARIF JSON Format
    • #2970: [core] PMD 6.30.0 release is not reproducible
    • #2994: [core] Fix code climate severity strings
  • java-bestpractices
    • #575: [java] LiteralsFirstInComparisons should consider constant fields
    • #2454: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod violation for disabled class in 6.23.0
    • #2833: [java] NPE in UseCollectionIsEmptyRule with enums
    • #2876: [java] UnusedPrivateField cannot override ignored annotations property
    • #2957: [java] Ignore unused declarations that have special name
  • java-codestyle
    • #2960: [java] Thread issue in MethodNamingConventionsRule
  • java-design
    • #3006: [java] NPE in SingularFieldRule with concise resource syntax
  • java-errorprone
    • #2976: [java] CompareObjectsWithEquals: FP with array.length
    • #2977: [java] 6.30.0 introduces new false positive in CloseResource rule?
    • #2979: [java] UseEqualsToCompareStrings: FP with “var” variables
    • #3004: [java] UseEqualsToCompareStrings false positive with PMD 6.30.0
    • #3062: [java] CloseResource FP with reassigned stream
  • java-performance
    • #2296: [java] Deprecate rule AvoidUsingShortType
    • #2740: [java] Deprecate rule SimplifyStartsWith
    • #3088: [java] AvoidInstantiatingObjectsInLoops - false positive with Collections
  • vf-security
    • #3081: [vf] VfUnescapeEl: Inherently un-XSS-able built-in functions trigger false positives

API Changes

Deprecated API

Experimental APIs

  • The method GenericToken#getKind has been added as experimental. This unifies the token interface for both JavaCC and Antlr. The already existing method AntlrToken#getKind is therefore experimental as well. The returned constant depends on the actual language and might change whenever the grammar of the language is changed.

External Contributions

Stats

  • 116 commits
  • 40 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 49

12-December-2020 - 6.30.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.30.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

CPD

  • The C# module now supports the new option --ignore-literal-sequences, which can be used to avoid detection of some uninteresting clones. Support for other languages may be added in the future. See #2945

  • The Scala module now supports suppression through CPD-ON/CPD-OFF comment pairs. See #2929

Type information for VisualForce

The Visualforce AST now can resolve the data type of Visualforce expressions that reference Apex Controller properties and Custom Object fields. This feature improves the precision of existing rules, like VfUnescapeEl.

This can be configured using two environment variables:

  • PMD_VF_APEXDIRECTORIES: Comma separated list of directories for Apex classes. Absolute or relative to the Visualforce directory. Default is ../classes. Specifying an empty string will disable data type resolution for Apex Controller properties.
  • PMD_VF_OBJECTSDIRECTORIES: Comma separated list of directories for Custom Objects. Absolute or relative to the Visualforce directory. Default is ../objects. Specifying an empty string will disable data type resolution for Custom Object fields.

This feature is experimental, in particular, expect changes to the way the configuration is specified. We’ll probably extend the CLI instead of relying on environment variables in a future version.

Thanks to Jeff Bartolotta and Roopa Mohan for contributing this!

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #1939: [core] XPath expressions return handling
    • #1961: [core] Text renderer should include name of violated rule
    • #2874: [core] Fix XMLRenderer with UTF-16
  • cs
    • #2938: [cs] CPD: ignoring using directives could not be disabled
  • java
    • #2911: [java] ClassTypeResolver#searchNodeNameForClass leaks memory
    • #2934: [java] CompareObjectsWithEquals / UseEqualsToCompareStrings - False negatives with fields
    • #2940: [java] Catch additional TypeNotPresentExceptions / LinkageErrors
  • scala
    • #2480: [scala] Support CPD suppressions

API Changes

Deprecated API

Around RuleSet parsing
Around the PMD class

Many classes around PMD’s entry point (PMD) have been deprecated as internal, including:

Miscellaneous

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

External Contributions

Stats

  • 190 commits
  • 25 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 49

24-October-2020 - 6.29.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.29.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Updated Apex Support

New Rules

  • The new Apex rule OperationWithLimitsInLoop (apex-performance) finds operations in loops that may hit governor limits such as DML operations, SOQL queries and more. The rule replaces the three rules “AvoidDmlStatementsInLoops”, “AvoidSoqlInLoops”, and “AvoidSoslInLoops”.

Renamed Rules

  • The Java rule DoNotCallSystemExit has been renamed to DoNotTerminateVM, since it checks for all the following calls: System.exit(int), Runtime.exit(int), Runtime.halt(int). All these calls terminate the Java VM, which is bad, if the VM runs an application server which many independent applications.

Deprecated Rules

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #2839: [apex] Apex classes with safe navigation operator from Winter 21 (50.0) are skipped
  • apex-performance
    • #1713: [apex] Mark Database DML statements in For Loop
  • core
    • #2831: [core] Fix XMLRenderer newlines when running under IBM Java
  • java-errorprone
    • #2157: [java] Improve DoNotCallSystemExit: permit call in main(), flag System.halt
    • #2764: [java] CloseResourceRule does not recognize multiple assignment done to resource
  • miscellaneous
    • #2823: [doc] Renamed/Moved rules are missing in documentation
  • vf (Salesforce VisualForce)
    • #2765: [vf] Attributes with dot cause a VfParseException

External Contributions

Stats

  • 50 commits
  • 23 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 27

26-September-2020 - 6.28.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.28.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

CPD’s AnyTokenizer has been improved

The AnyTokenizer is used for languages, that don’t have an own lexer/grammar based tokenizer. AnyTokenizer now handles string literals and end-of-line comments. Fortran, Perl and Ruby have been updated to use AnyTokenizer instead of their old custom tokenizer based on AbstractTokenizer. See #2758 for details.

AbstractTokenizer and the custom tokenizers of Fortran, Perl and Ruby are deprecated now.

Fixed Issues

  • cpd
    • #2758: [cpd] Improve AnyTokenizer
    • #2760: [cpd] AnyTokenizer doesn’t count columns correctly
  • apex-security
    • #2774: [apex] ApexSharingViolations does not correlate sharing settings with class that contains data access
  • java
    • #2738: [java] Custom rule with @ExhaustiveEnumSwitch throws NPE
    • #2755: [java] [6.27.0] Exception applying rule CloseResource on file … java.lang.NullPointerException
    • #2756: [java] TypeTestUtil fails with NPE for anonymous class
    • #2767: [java] IndexOutOfBoundsException when parsing an initializer BlockStatement
    • #2783: [java] Error while parsing with lambda of custom interface
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2759: [java] False positive in UnusedAssignment
  • java-design
    • #2708: [java] False positive FinalFieldCouldBeStatic when using lombok Builder.Default

API Changes

Deprecated API

For removal

External Contributions

  • #2735: [ci] Add github actions for a fast view of pr succeed/not - XenoAmess
  • #2747: [java] Don’t trigger FinalFieldCouldBeStatic when field is annotated with lombok @Builder.Default - Ollie Abbey
  • #2773: [java] issue-2738: Adding null check to avoid npe when switch case is default - Nimit Patel
  • #2789: Add badge for reproducible build - Dan Rollo
  • #2791: [apex] Analyze inner classes for sharing violations - Jeff Bartolotta

Stats

  • 58 commits
  • 24 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 25

31-August-2020 - 6.27.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.27.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Java 15 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 15. PMD can parse Text Blocks which have been promoted to be a standard language feature of Java.

PMD also supports Pattern Matching for instanceof, Records, and Sealed Classes.

Note: The Pattern Matching for instanceof, Records, and Sealed Classes are all preview language features of OpenJDK 15 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 environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 15-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd -language java -version 15-preview ...

Note: Support for Java 13 preview language features have been removed. The version “13-preview” is no longer available.

Changes in how tab characters are handled

In the past, tab characters in source files has been handled differently in different languages by PMD. For instance in Java, tab characters had a width of 8 columns, while C# used only 1 column. Visualforce instead used 4 columns.

This has been unified now so that tab characters are consistently now always 1 column wide.

This however might be a incompatible change, if you’re using the properties “BeginColumn” or “EndColumn” additionally to “BeginLine” and “EndLine” of a Token/AST node in order to highlight where a rule violation occurred in the source file. If you have logic there that deals with tab characters, you most likely can remove this logic now, since tab characters are now just “normal” characters in terms of string processing.

See also [all] Ensure PMD/CPD uses tab width of 1 for tabs consistently #2656.

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule AvoidReassigningCatchVariables (java-bestpractices) finds cases where the variable of the caught exception is reassigned. This practice is surprising and prevents further evolution of the code like multi-catch.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule CloseResource (java-errorprone) has a new property closeNotInFinally. With this property set to true the rule will also find calls to close a resource, which are not in a finally-block of a try-statement. If a resource is not closed within a finally block, it might not be closed at all in case of exceptions.

    As this new detection would yield many new violations, it is disabled by default. It might be enabled in a later version of PMD.

Deprecated Rules

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #724: [core] Avoid parsing rulesets multiple times
    • #1962: [core] Simplify Report API
    • #2653: [lang-test] Upgrade kotlintest to Kotest
    • #2656: [all] Ensure PMD/CPD uses tab width of 1 for tabs consistently
    • #2690: [core] Fix java7 compatibility
  • java
    • #2646: [java] Support JDK 15
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2471: [java] New Rule: AvoidReassigningCatchVariables
    • #2663: [java] NoClassDefFoundError on upgrade from 6.25.0 to 6.26.0
    • #2668: [java] UnusedAssignment false positives
    • #2673: [java] UnusedPrivateField and SingularField false positive with lombok annotation EqualsAndHashCode
    • #2684: [java] UnusedAssignment FP in try/catch
    • #2686: [java] UnusedAssignment must not flag abstract method parameters in interfaces and abstract classes
  • java-design
    • #2108: [java] [doc] ImmutableField rule: Description should clarify shallow immutability
    • #2461: [java] ExcessiveParameterListRule must ignore a private constructor
  • java-errorprone
    • #2264: [java] SuspiciousEqualsMethodName: Improve description about error-prone overloading of equals()
    • #2410: [java] ProperCloneImplementation not valid for final class
    • #2431: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormatRule throws IndexOutOfBoundsException when only logging exception message
    • #2439: [java] AvoidCatchingThrowable can not detect the case: catch (java.lang.Throwable t)
    • #2470: [java] CloseResource false positive when resource included in return value
    • #2531: [java] UnnecessaryCaseChange can not detect the case like: foo.equals(bar.toLowerCase())
    • #2647: [java] Deprecate rule DataFlowAnomalyAnalysis
  • java-performance
    • #1868: [java] false-positive for SimplifyStartsWith if string is empty
    • #2441: [java] RedundantFieldInitializer can not detect a special case for char initialize: char foo = '\0';
    • #2530: [java] StringToString can not detect the case: getStringMethod().toString()
  • dart
    • #2750: [dart] [cpd] Cpd Dart escaped dollar

API Changes

  • XML rule definition in rulesets: In PMD 7, the language attribute will be required on all rule elements that declare a new rule. Some base rule classes set the language implicitly in their constructor, and so this is not required in all cases for the rule to work. But this behavior will be discontinued in PMD 7, so missing language attributes are now reported as a forward compatibility warning.

Deprecated API

For removal

External Contributions

Stats

  • 189 commits
  • 68 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 37

25-July-2020 - 6.26.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.26.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

New Rules

  • The new Java rule UnusedAssignment (java-bestpractices) finds assignments to variables, that are never used and are useless. The new rule is supposed to entirely replace DataflowAnomalyAnalysis.

Modified rules

  • The Java rule ArrayIsStoredDirectly (java-bestpractices) now ignores by default private methods and constructors. You can restore the old behavior by setting the new property allowPrivate to “false”.

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #2610: [apex] Support top-level enums in rules
  • apex-bestpractices
    • #2626: [apex] UnusedLocalVariable - false positive on case insensitivity allowed in Apex
  • apex-performance
    • #2598: [apex] AvoidSoqlInLoops false positive for SOQL with in For-Loop
  • apex-security
    • #2620: [visualforce] False positive on VfUnescapeEl with new Message Channel feature
  • core
    • #710: [core] Review used dependencies
    • #2594: [core] Update exec-maven-plugin and align it in all project
    • #2615: [core] PMD/CPD produces invalid XML (insufficient escaping/wrong encoding)
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2543: [java] UseCollectionIsEmpty can not detect the case this.foo.size()
    • #2569: [java] LiteralsFirstInComparisons: False negative for methods returning Strings
    • #2622: [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly false positive with private constructor/methods
  • java-codestyle
    • #2546: [java] DuplicateImports reported for the same import… and import static…
  • java-design
    • #2174: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive with ‘this’ pointer
    • #2181: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive with indexed array access
    • #2189: [java] LawOfDemeter: False positive when casting to derived class
    • #2580: [java] AvoidThrowingNullPointerException marks all NullPointerException objects as wrong, whether or not thrown
    • #2625: [java] NPathComplexity can’t handle switch expressions
  • java-errorprone
    • #2578: [java] AvoidCallingFinalize detects some false positives
    • #2634: [java] NullPointerException in rule ProperCloneImplementation
  • java-performance
    • #1736: [java] UseStringBufferForStringAppends: False positive if only one concatenation
    • #2207: [java] AvoidInstantiatingObjectsInLoops: False positive - should not flag objects when assigned to lists/arrays

API Changes

Deprecated API

For removal

External Contributions

Stats

  • 156 commits
  • 43 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 28

27-June-2020 - 6.25.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.25.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Scala cross compilation

Up until now the PMD Scala module has been compiled against scala 2.13 only by default. However, this makes it impossible to use pmd as a library in scala projects, that use scala 2.12, e.g. in sbt plugins. Therefore PMD now provides cross compiled pmd-scala modules for both versions: scala 2.12 and scala 2.13.

The new modules have new maven artifactIds. The old artifactId net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-scala:6.25.0 is still available, but is deprecated from now on. It has been demoted to be just a delegation to the new pmd-scala_2.13 module and will be removed eventually.

The coordinates for the new modules are:

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
    <artifactId>pmd-scala_2.12</artifactId>
    <version>6.25.0</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
    <artifactId>pmd-scala_2.13</artifactId>
    <version>6.25.0</version>
</dependency>

The command line version of PMD continues to use scala 2.13.

New Rules

  • The new Java Rule UnnecessaryCast (java-codestyle) finds casts that are unnecessary while accessing collection elements.

  • The new Java Rule AvoidCalendarDateCreation (java-performance) finds usages of java.util.Calendar whose purpose is just to get the current date. This can be done in a more lightweight way.

  • The new Java Rule UseIOStreamsWithApacheCommonsFileItem (java-performance) finds usage of FileItem.get() and FileItem.getString(). These two methods are problematic since they load the whole uploaded file into memory.

Modified rules

  • The Java rule UseDiamondOperator (java-codestyle) now by default finds unnecessary usages of type parameters, which are nested, involve wildcards and are used within a ternary operator. These usages are usually only unnecessary with Java8 and later, when the type inference in Java has been improved.

    In order to avoid false positives when checking Java7 only code, the rule has the new property java7Compatibility, which is disabled by default. Settings this to “true” retains the old rule behaviour.

Fixed Issues

  • apex-bestpractices
    • #2554: [apex] Exception applying rule UnusedLocalVariable on trigger
  • core
    • #971: [apex][plsql][java] Deprecate overly specific base rule classes
    • #2451: [core] Deprecate support for List attributes with XPath 2.0
    • #2599: [core] Fix XPath 2.0 Rule Chain Analyzer with Unions
    • #2483: [lang-test] Support cpd tests based on text comparison. For details see Testing your implementation in the developer documentation.
  • c#
    • #2551: [c#] CPD suppression with comments doesn’t work
  • cpp
    • #1757: [cpp] Support unicode characters
  • java
    • #2549: [java] Auxclasspath in PMD CLI does not support relative file path
  • java-codestyle
    • #2545: [java] UseDiamondOperator false negatives
    • #2573: [java] DefaultPackage: Allow package default JUnit 5 Test methods
  • java-design
    • #2563: [java] UselessOverridingMethod false negative with already public methods
    • #2570: [java] NPathComplexity should mention the expected NPath complexity
  • java-errorprone
    • #2544: [java] UseProperClassLoader can not detect the case with method call on intermediate variable
  • java-performance
    • #2591: [java] InefficientStringBuffering/AppendCharacterWithChar: Fix false negatives with concats in appends
    • #2600: [java] UseStringBufferForStringAppends: fix false negative with fields
  • scala
    • #2547: [scala] Add cross compilation for scala 2.12 and 2.13

API Changes

  • The maven module net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-scala is deprecated. Use net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-scala_2.13 or net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-scala_2.12 instead.

  • Rule implementation classes are internal API and should not be used by clients directly. The rules should only be referenced via their entry in the corresponding category ruleset (e.g. <rule ref="category/java/bestpractices.xml/AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethod" />).

    While we definitely won’t move or rename the rule classes in PMD 6.x, we might consider changes in PMD 7.0.0 and onwards.

Deprecated APIs

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

For removal

External Contributions

Stats

  • 135 commits
  • 31 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 33

24-May-2020 - 6.24.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.24.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

CPD now supports XML as well

Thanks to Fernando Cosso CPD can now find duplicates in XML files as well. This is useful to find duplicated sections in XML files.

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.

New Rules

  • The new Java Rule LiteralsFirstInComparisons (java-bestpractices) find String literals, that are used in comparisons and are not positioned first. Using the String literal as the receiver of e.g. equals helps to avoid NullPointerExceptions.

    This rule is replacing the two old rules PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons and PositionLiteralsFirstInCaseInsensitiveComparisons and extends the check for the methods compareTo, compareToIgnoreCase and contentEquals in addition to equals and equalsIgnoreCase.

    Note: This rule also replaces the two mentioned rules in Java’s quickstart ruleset.

Deprecated Rules

Fixed Issues

  • apex-bestpractices
    • #2468: [apex] Unused Local Variable fails on blocks
  • core
    • #2444: [core] Support reproducible builds
    • #2484: [core] Update maven-enforcer-plugin to require Java 118
  • c#
    • #2495: [c#] Support for interpolated verbatim strings
  • java
    • #2472: [java] JavaCharStream throws an Error on invalid escape
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2145: [java] Deprecate rules PositionLiteralsFirstIn(CaseInsensitive)Comparisons in favor of LiteralsFirstInComparisons
    • #2288: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert: Add support for Hamcrest MatcherAssert.assertThat
    • #2437: [java] AvoidPrintStackTrace can’t detect the case e.getCause().printStackTrace()
  • java-codestyle
    • #2476: [java] MethodNamingConventions - Add support for JUnit 5 method naming
  • java-errorprone
    • #2477: [java] JUnitSpelling false-positive for JUnit5/4 tests
  • swift
    • #2473: [swift] Swift 5 (up to 5.2) support for CPD

API Changes

Deprecated APIs

Experimental APIs

Note: Experimental APIs are identified with the annotation Experimental, see its javadoc for details

External Contributions

Stats

  • 114 commits
  • 29 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 30

24-April-2020 - 6.23.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.23.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

PMD adopts Contributor Code of Conduct

To facilitate healthy and constructive community behavior PMD adopts Contributor Convenant as its code of conduct.

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

You can find the code of conduct in the file code_of_conduct.md in our repository.

Performance improvements for XPath 2.0 rules

XPath rules written with XPath 2.0 now support conversion to a rulechain rule, which improves their performance. The rulechain is a mechanism that allows several rules to be executed in a single tree traversal. Conversion to the rulechain is possible if your XPath expression looks like //someNode/... | //someOtherNode/... | ..., that is, a union of one or more path expressions that start with //. Instead of traversing the whole tree once per path expression (and per rule), a single traversal executes all rules in your ruleset as needed.

This conversion is performed automatically and cannot be disabled. The conversion should not change the result of your rules, if it does, please report a bug at https://github.com/pmd/pmd/issues

Note that XPath 1.0 support, the default XPath version, is deprecated since PMD 6.22.0. We highly recommend that you upgrade your rules to XPath 2.0. Please refer to the migration guide.

Javascript improvements for ES6

PMD uses the Rhino library to parse Javascript. The default version has been set to ES6, so that some ECMAScript 2015 features are supported. E.g. let statements and for-of loops are now parsed. However Rhino does not support all features.

New JSON renderer

PMD now supports a JSON renderer (use it with -f json on the CLI). See the documentation and example

New Rules

Fixed Issues

  • apex-design
    • #2358: [apex] Invalid Apex in Cognitive Complexity tests
  • apex-security
    • #2210: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation: Support WITH SECURITY_ENFORCED
    • #2399: [apex] ApexCRUDViolation: false positive with security enforced with line break
  • core
    • #1286: [core] Export Supporting JSON Format
    • #2019: [core] Insufficient deprecation warnings for XPath attributes
    • #2357: Add code of conduct: Contributor Covenant
    • #2426: [core] CodeClimate renderer links are dead
    • #2432: [core] Close ZIP data sources even if a runtime exception or error is thrown
  • doc
    • #2355: [doc] Improve documentation about incremental analysis
    • #2356: [doc] Add missing doc about pmd.github.io
    • #2412: [core] HTMLRenderer doesn’t render links to source files
    • #2413: [doc] Improve documentation about the available renderers (PMD/CPD)
  • java
    • #2378: [java] AbstractJUnitRule has bad performance on large code bases
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2398: [java] AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethod false negative with inner abstract classes
  • java-codestyle
    • #1164: [java] ClassNamingConventions suggests to add Util for class containing only static constants
    • #1723: [java] UseDiamondOperator false-positive inside lambda
  • java-design
    • #2390: [java] AbstractClassWithoutAnyMethod: missing violation for nested classes
  • java-errorprone
    • #2402: [java] CloseResource possible false positive with Primitive Streams
  • java-multithreading
    • #2313: [java] Documentation for DoNotUseThreads is outdated
  • javascript
    • #1235: [javascript] Use of let results in an Empty Statement in the AST
    • #2379: [javascript] Support for-of loop
  • javascript-errorprone
    • #384: [javascript] Trailing commas not detected on French default locale

API Changes

Deprecated APIs

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

In ASTs

As part of the changes we’d like to do to AST classes for 7.0.0, we would like to hide some methods and constructors that rule writers should not have access to. The following usages are now deprecated in the Apex, Javascript, PL/SQL, Scala and Visualforce ASTs:

  • Manual instantiation of nodes. Constructors of node classes are deprecated and marked InternalApi. Nodes should only be obtained from the parser, which for rules, means that they never need to instantiate node themselves. Those constructors will be made package private with 7.0.0.
  • Subclassing of abstract node classes, or usage of their type. The base classes are internal API and will be hidden in version 7.0.0. You should not couple your code to them.
    • In the meantime you should use interfaces like VfNode or Node, or the other published interfaces in this package, to refer to nodes generically.
    • Concrete node classes will be made final with 7.0.0.
  • Setters found in any node class or interface. Rules should consider the AST immutable. We will make those setters package private with 7.0.0.
  • The implementation classes of Parser (eg VfParser) are deprecated and should not be used directly. Use LanguageVersionHandler#getParser instead.
  • The implementation classes of TokenManager (eg VfTokenManager) are deprecated and should not be used outside of our implementation. This also affects CPD-only modules.

These deprecations are added to the following language modules in this release. Please look at the package documentation to find out the full list of deprecations.

These deprecations have already been rolled out in a previous version for the following languages:

Outside of these packages, these changes also concern the following TokenManager implementations, and their corresponding Parser if it exists (in the same package):

In the Java AST the following attributes are deprecated and will issue a warning when used in XPath rules:

For removal

External Contributions

Stats

  • 237 commits
  • 64 closed tickets & PRs
  • Days since last release: 42

12-March-2020 - 6.22.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.22.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Java 14 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 14. PMD can parse Switch Expressions, which have been promoted to be a standard language feature of Java.

PMD also parses Text Blocks as String literals, which is still a preview language feature in Java 14.

The new Pattern Matching for instanceof can be used as well as Records.

Note: The Text Blocks, Pattern Matching for instanceof and Records are all preview language features of OpenJDK 14 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 environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 14-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd -language java -version 14-preview ...

Note: Support for the extended break statement introduced in Java 12 as a preview language feature has been removed from PMD with this version. The version “12-preview” is no longer available.

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.

Apex Suppressions

In addition to suppressing violation with the @SuppressWarnings annotation, Apex now also supports the suppressions with a NOPMD comment. See Suppressing warnings.

Improved CPD support for C#

The C# tokenizer is now based on an antlr grammar instead of a manual written tokenizer. This should give more accurate results and especially fixes the problems with the using statement syntax (see #2139).

XPath Rules

See the new documentation about Writing XPath Rules.

Note: As of PMD version 6.22.0, XPath versions 1.0 and the 1.0 compatibility mode are deprecated. XPath 2.0 is superior in many ways, for example for its support for type checking, sequence values, or quantified expressions. For a detailed but approachable review of the features of XPath 2.0 and above, see the Saxon documentation.

New Rules

  • The Rule CognitiveComplexity (apex-design) finds methods and classes that are highly complex and therefore difficult to read and more costly to maintain. In contrast to cyclomatic complexity, this rule uses “Cognitive Complexity”, which is a measure of how difficult it is for humans to read and understand a method.

  • The Rule TestMethodsMustBeInTestClasses (apex-errorprone) finds test methods that are not residing in a test class. The test methods should be moved to a proper test class. Support for tests inside functional classes was removed in Spring-13 (API Version 27.0), making classes that violate this rule fail compile-time. This rule is however useful when dealing with legacy code.

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #1087: [apex] Support suppression via //NOPMD
    • #2306: [apex] Switch statements are not parsed/supported
  • apex-design
    • #2162: [apex] Cognitive Complexity rule
  • apex-errorprone
    • #639: [apex] Test methods should not be in classes other than test classes
  • cs
    • #2139: [cs] CPD doesn’t understand alternate using statement syntax with C# 8.0
  • doc
    • #2274: [doc] Java API documentation for PMD
  • java
    • #2159: [java] Prepare for JDK 14
    • #2268: [java] Improve TypeHelper resilience
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2277: [java] FP in UnusedImports for ambiguous static on-demand imports
  • java-design
    • #911: [java] UselessOverridingMethod false positive when elevating access modifier
  • java-errorprone
    • #2242: [java] False-positive MisplacedNullCheck reported
    • #2250: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat flags logging calls using a slf4j-Marker
    • #2255: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat false-positive for a lambda argument
  • java-performance
    • #2275: [java] AppendCharacterWithChar flags literals in an expression
  • plsql
    • #2325: [plsql] NullPointerException while running parsing test for CREATE TRIGGER
    • #2327: [plsql] Parsing of WHERE CURRENT OF
    • #2328: [plsql] Support XMLROOT
    • #2331: [plsql] Fix in Comment statement
    • #2332: [plsql] Fixed Execute Immediate statement parsing
    • #2340: [plsql] Fixed parsing / as divide or execute

API Changes

Deprecated APIs

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

For removal
In ASTs (JSP)

As part of the changes we’d like to do to AST classes for 7.0.0, we would like to hide some methods and constructors that rule writers should not have access to. The following usages are now deprecated in the JSP AST (with other languages to come):

  • Manual instantiation of nodes. Constructors of node classes are deprecated and marked InternalApi. Nodes should only be obtained from the parser, which for rules, means that they never need to instantiate node themselves. Those constructors will be made package private with 7.0.0.
  • Subclassing of abstract node classes, or usage of their type. The base classes are internal API and will be hidden in version 7.0.0. You should not couple your code to them.
    • In the meantime you should use interfaces like JspNode or Node, or the other published interfaces in this package, to refer to nodes generically.
    • Concrete node classes will be made final with 7.0.0.
  • Setters found in any node class or interface. Rules should consider the AST immutable. We will make those setters package private with 7.0.0.
  • The class JspParser is deprecated and should not be used directly. Use LanguageVersionHandler#getParser instead.

Please look at net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.jsp.ast to find out the full list of deprecations.

In ASTs (Velocity)

As part of the changes we’d like to do to AST classes for 7.0.0, we would like to hide some methods and constructors that rule writers should not have access to. The following usages are now deprecated in the VM AST (with other languages to come):

  • Manual instantiation of nodes. Constructors of node classes are deprecated and marked InternalApi. Nodes should only be obtained from the parser, which for rules, means that they never need to instantiate node themselves. Those constructors will be made package private with 7.0.0.
  • Subclassing of abstract node classes, or usage of their type. The base classes are internal API and will be hidden in version 7.0.0. You should not couple your code to them.
    • In the meantime you should use interfaces like VmNode or Node, or the other published interfaces in this package, to refer to nodes generically.
    • Concrete node classes will be made final with 7.0.0.
  • Setters found in any node class or interface. Rules should consider the AST immutable. We will make those setters package private with 7.0.0.
  • The package net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.vm.directive as well as the classes DirectiveMapper and LogUtil are deprecated for removal. They were only used internally during parsing.
  • The class VmParser is deprecated and should not be used directly. Use LanguageVersionHandler#getParser instead.

Please look at net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.vm.ast to find out the full list of deprecations.

PLSQL AST

The production and node ASTCursorBody was unnecessary, not used and has been removed. Cursors have been already parsed as ASTCursorSpecification.

External Contributions

24-January-2020 - 6.21.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.21.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Modelica support

Thanks to Anatoly Trosinenko PMD supports now a new language: Modelica is a language to model complex physical systems. Both PMD and CPD are supported and there are already 3 rules available. The PMD Designer supports syntax highlighting for Modelica.

While the language implementation is quite complete, Modelica support is considered experimental for now. This is to allow us to change the rule API (e.g. the AST classes) slightly and improve the implementation based on your feedback.

Simple XML dump of AST

We added a experimental feature to dump the AST of a source file into XML. The XML format is of course PMD specific and language dependent. That XML file can be used to execute (XPath) queries against without PMD. It can also be used as a textual visualization of the AST if you don’t want to use the Designer.

This feature is experimental and might change or even be removed in the future, if it is not useful. A short description how to use it is available under Creating XML dump of the AST.

Any feedback about it, especially about your use cases, is highly appreciated.

Updated Apex Support

  • The Apex language support has been bumped to version 48 (Spring ‘20). All new language features are now properly parsed and processed.

CPD XML format

The CPD XML output format has been enhanced to also report column information for found duplications in addition to the line information. This allows to display the exact tokens, that are considered duplicate.

If a CPD language doesn’t provide these exact information, then these additional attributes are omitted.

Each <file> element in the XML format now has 3 new attributes:

  • attribute endline
  • attribute column (if there is column information available)
  • attribute endcolumn (if there is column information available)

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule AvoidLiteralsInIfCondition (java-errorprone) has a new property ignoreExpressions. This property is set by default to true in order to maintain compatibility. If this property is set to false, then literals in more complex expressions are considered as well.

  • The Apex rule ApexCSRF (apex-errorprone) has been moved from category “Security” to “Error Prone”. The Apex runtime already prevents DML statements from being executed, but only at runtime. So, if you try to do this, you’ll get an error at runtime, hence this is error prone. See also the discussion on #2064.

  • The Java rule CommentRequired (java-documentation) has a new property classCommentRequirement. This replaces the now deprecated property headerCommentRequirement, since the name was misleading. (File) header comments are not checked, but class comments are.

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #2208: [apex] ASTFormalComment should implement ApexNode<T>
  • core
    • #1984: [java] Cyclomatic complexity is misreported (lack of clearing metrics cache)
    • #2006: [core] PMD should warn about multiple instances of the same rule in a ruleset
    • #2161: [core] ResourceLoader is deprecated and marked as internal but is exposed
    • #2170: [core] DocumentFile doesn’t preserve newlines
  • doc
    • #2214: [doc] Link broken in pmd documentation for writing Xpath rules
  • java
    • #2212: [java] JavaRuleViolation reports wrong class name
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2149: [java] JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage - False positive with assertEquals and JUnit5
  • java-codestyle
    • #2167: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn false positive with variable captured by method reference
  • java-documentation
    • #1683: [java] CommentRequired property names are inconsistent
  • java-errorprone
    • #2140: [java] AvoidLiteralsInIfCondition: false negative for expressions
    • #2196: [java] InvalidLogMessageFormat does not detect extra parameters when no placeholders
  • java-performance
    • #2141: [java] StringInstatiation: False negative with String-array access
  • plsql
    • #2008: [plsql] In StringLiteral using alternative quoting mechanism single quotes cause parsing errors
    • #2009: [plsql] Multiple DDL commands are skipped during parsing

API Changes

Deprecated APIs

Internal API

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

For removal

External Contributions

29-November-2019 - 6.20.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.20.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #2092: [apex] ApexLexer logs visible when Apex is the selected language upon starting the designer
    • #2136: [apex] Provide access to underlying query of SoqlExpression
  • core
    • #2002: [doc] Issue with http://pmdapplied.com/ linking to a gambling Web site
    • #2062: [core] Shortnames parameter does not work with Ant
    • #2090: [ci] Release notes and draft releases
    • #2096: [core] Referencing category errorprone.xml produces deprecation warnings for InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat
  • java
    • #1861: [java] Be more lenient with version numbers
    • #2105: [java] Wrong name for inner classes in violations
  • java-bestpractices
    • #2016: [java] UnusedImports: False positive if wildcard is used and only static methods
  • java-codestyle
    • #1362: [java] LinguisticNaming flags Predicates with boolean-style names
    • #2029: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName false-positive for non-static nested classes
    • #2098: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName: regression / false positive
  • java-design
    • #2075: [java] ImmutableField false positive with inner class
    • #2125: [java] ImmutableField: False positive when variable is updated in conditional loop
  • java-errorprone
    • #2102: [java] False positive MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass when inheritors are instantiable

External Contributions

31-October-2019 - 6.19.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.19.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.

Java Metrics

Modified Rules

  • The Java rules InvalidLogMessageFormat and MoreThanOneLogger (java-errorprone) now both support Log4j2. Note that the rule “InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat” has been renamed to “InvalidLogMessageFormat” to reflect the fact, that it now supports more than slf4j.

  • The Java rule LawOfDemeter (java-design) ignores now also Builders, that are not assigned to a local variable, but just directly used within a method call chain. The method, that creates the builder needs to end with “Builder”, e.g. newBuilder() or initBuilder() works. This change fixes a couple of false positives.

  • The Java rule DataflowAnomalyAnalysis (java-errorprone) doesn’t check for UR anomalies (undefined and then referenced) anymore. These checks were all false-positives, since actual UR occurrences would lead to compile errors.

  • The java rule DoNotUseThreads (java-multithreading) has been changed to not report usages of java.lang.Runnable anymore. Just using Runnable does not automatically create a new thread. While the check for Runnable has been removed, the rule now additionally checks for usages of Executors and ExecutorService. Both create new threads, which are not managed by a J2EE server.

Renamed Rules

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #1978: [core] PMD fails on excluding unknown rules
    • #2014: [core] Making add(SourceCode sourceCode) public for alternative file systems
    • #2020: [core] Wrong deprecation warnings for unused XPath attributes
    • #2036: [core] Wrong include/exclude patterns are silently ignored
    • #2048: [core] Enable type resolution by default for XPath rules
    • #2067: [core] Build issue on Windows
    • #2068: [core] Rule loader should use the same resources loader for the ruleset
    • #2071: [ci] Add travis build on windows
    • #2072: [test][core] Not enough info in “test setup error” when numbers of lines do not match
    • #2082: [core] Incorrect logging of deprecated/renamed rules
  • java
    • #2042: [java] PMD crashes with ClassFormatError: Absent Code attribute…
  • java-bestpractices
    • #1531: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod false-positive with method result
    • #2025: [java] UnusedImports when @see / @link pattern includes a FQCN
  • java-codestyle
    • #2017: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName triggered for inner class
  • java-design
    • #1912: [java] Metrics not computed correctly with annotations
  • java-errorprone
    • #336: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat applies to log4j2
    • #1636: [java] Stop checking UR anomalies for DataflowAnomalyAnalysis
  • java-multithreading
    • #1627: [java] DoNotUseThreads should not warn on Runnable
  • doc
    • #2058: [doc] CLI reference for -norulesetcompatibility shows a boolean default value

API Changes

Deprecated APIs

For removal
Internal APIs

External Contributions

15-September-2019 - 6.18.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.18.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Java 13 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 13. PMD can parse Switch Expressions with the new yield statement and resolve the type of such an expression.

PMD also parses Text Blocks as String literals.

Note: The Switch Expressions and Text Blocks are a preview language feature of OpenJDK 13 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 environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 13-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd -language java -version 13-preview ...

Note: Support for the extended break statement introduced in Java 12 as a preview language feature will be removed with the next PMD version 6.19.0.

Full support for Scala

Thanks to Chris Smith PMD now fully supports Scala. Now rules for analyzing Scala code can be developed in addition to the Copy-Paste-Detection (CPD) functionality. There are no rules yet, so contributions are welcome.

Additionally Scala support has been upgraded from 2.12.4 to 2.13.

New rule designer documentation

The documentation for the rule designer is now available on the main PMD documentation page: Rule Designer Reference. Check it out to learn about the usage and features of the rule designer.

New rules

  • The Java rule AvoidMessageDigestField (java-bestpractices) detects fields of the type java.security.MessageDigest. Using a message digest instance as a field would need to be synchronized, as it can easily be used by multiple threads. Without synchronization the calculated hash could be entirely wrong. Instead of declaring this as a field and synchronize access to use it from multiple threads, a new instance should be created when needed. This rule is also active when using java’s quickstart ruleset.

  • The Apex rule DebugsShouldUseLoggingLevel (apex-bestpractices) detects usages of System.debug() method calls that are used without specifying the log level. Having the log level specified provides a cleaner log, and improves readability of it.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule CloseResource (java-errorprone) now ignores by default instances of java.util.stream.Stream. These streams are AutoCloseable, but most streams are backed by collections, arrays, or generating functions, which require no special resource management. However, there are some exceptions: The stream returned by Files::lines(Path) is backed by a actual file and needs to be closed. These instances won’t be found by default by the rule anymore.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #1465: [core] Stylesheet pmd-report.xslt fails to display filepath if ‘java’ in path
    • #1923: [core] Incremental analysis does not work with shortnames
    • #1983: [core] Avoid crashes with analysis cache when classpath references non-existing directories
    • #1990: [core] Incremental analysis mixes XPath rule violations
  • apex
    • #1901: [apex] Expose super type name of UserClass
    • #1942: [apex] Add best practice rule for debug statements in Apex
  • java
    • #1930: [java] Add Java 13 support
  • java-bestpractices
    • #1227: [java] UnusedFormalParameter should explain checkAll better
    • #1862: [java] New rule for MessageDigest.getInstance
    • #1952: [java] UnusedPrivateField not triggering if @Value annotation present
  • java-codestyle
    • #1951: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName rule triggered when variable name clashes with package name
  • java-errorprone
    • #1922: [java] CloseResource possible false positive with Streams
    • #1966: [java] CloseResource false positive if Stream is passed as method parameter
    • #1967: [java] CloseResource false positive with late assignment of variable
  • plsql
    • #1933: [plsql] ParseException with cursor declared in anonymous block
    • #1935: [plsql] ParseException with SELECT INTO record defined as global variable
    • #1936: [plslq] ParseException with cursor inside procedure declaration
    • #1946: [plsql] ParseException with using TRIM inside IF statements condition
    • #1947: [plsql] ParseError - SELECT with FOR UPDATE OF
    • #1948: [plsql] ParseException with INSERT INTO using package global variables
    • #1950: [plsql] ParseException with UPDATE and package record variable
    • #1953: [plsql] ParseException with WITH in CURSOR

API Changes

Changes to Renderer

  • Each renderer has now a new method Renderer#setUseShortNames which is used for implementing the “shortnames” CLI option. The method is automatically called by PMD, if this CLI option is in use. When rendering filenames to the report, the new helper method AbstractRenderer#determineFileName should be used. This will change the filename to a short name, if the CLI option “shortnames” is used.

    Not adjusting custom renderers will make them render always the full file names and not honoring the CLI option “shortnames”.

Deprecated APIs

For removal
Internal APIs

Those APIs are not intended to be used by clients, and will be hidden or removed with PMD 7.0.0. You can identify them with the @InternalApi annotation. You’ll also get a deprecation warning.

External Contributions

28-July-2019 - 6.17.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.17.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog. It contains a new feature to edit test cases directly within the designer. Any feedback is highly appreciated.

Lua support

Thanks to the contribution from Maikel Steneker, and built on top of the ongoing efforts to fully support Antlr-based languages, PMD now has CPD support for Lua.

Being based on a proper Antlr grammar, CPD can:

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule CloseResource (java-errorprone) ignores now by default java.io.ByteArrayInputStream and java.io.CharArrayWriter. Such streams/writers do not need to be closed.

  • The Java rule MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass (java-errorprone) has now the new property annotations. When one of the private constructors is annotated with one of the annotations, then the class is not considered non-instantiatable anymore and no violation will be reported. By default, Spring’s @Autowired and Java EE’s @Inject annotations are recognized.

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #1913: [core] “-help” CLI option ends with status code != 0
  • doc
    • #1896: [doc] Error in changelog 6.16.0 due to not properly closed rule tag
    • #1898: [doc] Incorrect code example for DoubleBraceInitialization in documentation on website
    • #1906: [doc] Broken link for adding own CPD languages
    • #1909: [doc] Sample usage example refers to deprecated ruleset “basic.xml” instead of “quickstart.xml”
  • java
    • #1910: [java] ATFD calculation problem
  • java-errorprone
    • #1749: [java] DD False Positive in DataflowAnomalyAnalysis
    • #1832: [java] False positives for MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass when DI is used
    • #1921: [java] CloseResource false positive with ByteArrayInputStream
  • java-multithreading
    • #1903: [java] UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter doesn’t allow block-level synchronization when using allowMethodLevelSynchronization=true
  • plsql
    • #1902: [pslql] ParseException when parsing (+)
  • xml
    • #1666: [xml] wrong cdata rule description and examples

External Contributions

  • #1869: [xml] fix #1666 wrong cdata rule description and examples - Artem
  • #1892: [lua] [cpd] Added CPD support for Lua - Maikel Steneker
  • #1905: [java] DataflowAnomalyAnalysis Rule in right order - YoonhoChoi96
  • #1908: [doc] Update ruleset filename from deprecated basic.xml to quickstart.xml - crunsk
  • #1916: [java] Exclude Autowired and Inject for MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass - AnthonyKot
  • #1917: [core] Add ‘no error’ return option, and assign it to the cli when the help command is invoked - Renato Oliveira

30-June-2019 - 6.16.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.16.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.

PLSQL Grammar Updates

The grammar has been updated to support inline constraints in CREATE TABLE statements. Additionally, the CREATE TABLE statement may now be followed by physical properties and table properties. However, these properties are skipped over during parsing.

The CREATE VIEW statement now supports subquery views.

The EXTRACT function can now be parsed correctly. It is used to extract values from a specified datetime field. Also date time literals are parsed now correctly.

The CASE expression can now be properly used within SELECT statements.

Table aliases are now supported when specifying columns in INSERT INTO clauses.

New Rules

  • The Java rule DoubleBraceInitialization (java-bestpractices) detects non static initializers in anonymous classes also known as “double brace initialization”. This can be problematic, since a new class file is generated and object holds a strong reference to the surrounding class.

    Note: This rule is also part of the Java quickstart ruleset (rulesets/java/quickstart.xml).

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule UnusedPrivateField (java-bestpractices) now ignores by default fields, that are annotated with the Lombok experimental annotation @Delegate. This can be customized with the property ignoredAnnotations.

  • The Java rule SingularField (java-design) now ignores by default fields, that are annotated with the Lombok experimental annotation @Delegate. This can be customized with the property ignoredAnnotations.

  • The Java rules UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter and UnsynchronizedStaticDateFormatter (java-multithreading) now prefer synchronized blocks by default. They will raise a violation, if the synchronization is implemented on the method level. To allow the old behavior, the new property allowMethodLevelSynchronization can be enabled.

  • The Java rule UseUtilityClass (java-design) has a new property ignoredAnnotations. By default, classes that are annotated with Lombok’s @UtilityClass are ignored now.

  • The Java rule NonStaticInitializer (java-errorprone) does not report non static initializers in anonymous classes anymore. For this use case, there is a new rule now: DoubleBraceInitialization (java-bestpractices).

  • The Java rule CommentDefaultAccessModifier (java-codestyle) was enhanced in the last version 6.15.0 to check also top-level types by default. This created many new violations. Missing the access modifier for top-level types is not so critical, since it only decreases the visibility of the type.

    The default behaviour has been restored. If you want to enable the check for top-level types, you can use the new property checkTopLevelTypes.

  • The Java rule CloseResource (java-errorprone) now by default searches for any unclosed java.lang.AutoCloseable resource. This includes now the standard java.io.*Stream classes. Previously only SQL-related resources were considered by this rule. The types can still be configured via the types property. Some resources do not need to be closed (e.g. ByteArrayOutputStream). These exceptions can be configured via the new property allowedResourceTypes. In order to restore the old behaviour, just remove the type java.lang.AutoCloseable from the types property and keep the remaining SQL-related classes.

Deprecated Rules

  • The Java rule AvoidFinalLocalVariable (java-codestyle) has been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0. The rule is controversial and also contradicts other existing rules such as LocalVariableCouldBeFinal. If the goal is to avoid defining constants in a scope smaller than the class, then the rule AvoidDuplicateLiterals should be used instead.

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #1664: [apex] False positive ApexSharingViolationsRule, unsupported Apex feature
  • java
    • #1848: [java] Local classes should preserve their modifiers
  • java-bestpractices
    • #1703: [java] UnusedPrivateField on member annotated with lombok @Delegate
    • #1845: [java] Regression in MethodReturnsInternalArray not handling enums
    • #1854: [java] Rule to check for double brace initialisation
  • java-codestyle
    • #1612: [java] Deprecate AvoidFinalLocalVariable
    • #1880: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifier should be configurable for top-level classes
  • java-design
    • #1094: [java] UseUtilityClass should be LombokAware
  • java-errorprone
    • #1000: [java] The rule CloseResource should deal with IO stream as default
    • #1853: [java] False positive for NonStaticInitializer in anonymous class
  • java-multithreading
    • #1814: [java] UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter documentation and implementation wrong
    • #1815: [java] False negative in UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter
  • plsql
    • #1828: [plsql] Parentheses stopped working
    • #1850: [plsql] Parsing errors with INSERT using returning or records and TRIM expression
    • #1873: [plsql] Expression list not working
    • #1878: [pslql] ParseException when parsing USING
    • #1879: [pslql] ParseException when parsing LEFT JOIN

API Changes

Deprecated APIs

Reminder: Please don’t use members marked with the annotation InternalApi, as they will likely be removed, hidden, or otherwise intentionally broken with 7.0.0.

In ASTs

As part of the changes we’d like to do to AST classes for 7.0.0, we would like to hide some methods and constructors that rule writers should not have access to. The following usages are now deprecated in the Java AST (with other languages to come):

  • Manual instantiation of nodes. Constructors of node classes are deprecated and marked InternalApi. Nodes should only be obtained from the parser, which for rules, means that never need to instantiate node themselves. Those constructors will be made package private with 7.0.0.
  • Subclassing of abstract node classes, or usage of their type. Version 7.0.0 will bring a new set of abstractions that will be public API, but the base classes are and will stay internal. You should not couple your code to them.
    • In the meantime you should use interfaces like JavaNode or Node, or the other published interfaces in this package, to refer to nodes generically.
    • Concrete node classes will be made final with 7.0.0.
  • Setters found in any node class or interface. Rules should consider the AST immutable. We will make those setters package private with 7.0.0.

Please look at net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.ast to find out the full list of deprecations.

External Contributions

26-May-2019 - 6.15.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.15.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Enhanced Matlab support

Thanks to the contributions from Maikel Steneker CPD for Matlab can now parse Matlab programs which use the question mark operator to specify access to class members:

classdef Class1
properties (SetAccess = ?Class2)

CPD also understands now double quoted strings, which are supported since version R2017a of Matlab:

str = "This is a string"

Enhanced C++ support

CPD now supports digit separators in C++ (language module “cpp”). This is a C++14 feature.

Example: auto integer_literal = 1'000'000;

The single quotes can be used to add some structure to large numbers.

CPD also parses raw string literals now correctly (see #1784).

New Rules

  • The new Apex rule FieldNamingConventions (apex-codestyle) checks the naming conventions for field declarations. By default this rule uses the standard Apex naming convention (Camel case), but it can be configured through properties.

  • The new Apex rule FormalParameterNamingConventions (apex-codestyle) checks the naming conventions for formal parameters of methods. By default this rule uses the standard Apex naming convention (Camel case), but it can be configured through properties.

  • The new Apex rule LocalVariableNamingConventions (apex-codestyle) checks the naming conventions for local variable declarations. By default this rule uses the standard Apex naming convention (Camel case), but it can be configured through properties.

  • The new Apex rule PropertyNamingConventions (apex-codestyle) checks the naming conventions for property declarations. By default this rule uses the standard Apex naming convention (Camel case), but it can be configured through properties.

  • The new Java rule UseShortArrayInitializer (java-codestyle) searches for array initialization expressions, which can be written shorter.

Modified Rules

  • The Apex rule ClassNamingConventions (apex-codestyle) can now be configured using various properties for the specific kind of type declarations (e.g. class, interface, enum). As before, this rule uses by default the standard Apex naming convention (Pascal case).

  • The Apex rule MethodNamingConventions (apex-codestyle) can now be configured using various properties to differenciate e.g. static methods and test methods. As before, this rule uses by default the standard Apex naming convention (Camel case).

  • The Java rule FieldNamingConventions (java-codestyle) now by default ignores the field serialPersistentFields. Since this is a field which needs to have this special name, no field naming conventions can be applied here. It is excluded the same way like serialVersionUID via the property exclusions.

  • The Java rule CommentRequired (java-documentation) has a new property serialPersistentFieldsCommentRequired with the default value “Ignored”. This means that from now on comments for the field serialPersistentFields are not required anymore. You can change the property to restore the old behavior.

  • The Java rule ProperLogger (java-errorprone) has two new properties to configure the logger class (e.g. “org.slf4j.Logger”) and the logger name of the special case, when the logger is not static. The name of the static logger variable was already configurable. The new property “loggerClass” allows to use this rule for different logging frameworks. This rule covers all the cases of the now deprecated rule LoggerIsNotStaticFinal.

  • The Java rule CommentDefaultAccessModifier (java-codestyle) now reports also missing comments for top-level classes and annotations, that are package-private.

Deprecated Rules

Fixed Issues

  • apex
    • #1321: [apex] Should VariableNamingConventions require properties to start with a lowercase letter?
    • #1783: [apex] comments on constructor not recognized when the Class has inner class
  • cpp
    • #1784: [cpp] Improve support for raw string literals
  • dart
    • #1809: [dart] [cpd] Parse error with escape sequences
  • java
    • #1842: [java] Annotated module declarations cause parse error
  • java-bestpractices
    • #1738: [java] MethodReturnsInternalArray does not work in inner classes
  • java-codestyle
    • #1495: [java] Rule to detect overly verbose array initializiation
    • #1684: [java] Properly whitelist serialPersistentFields
    • #1804: [java] NPE in UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturnRule
  • python
    • #1810: [python] [cpd] Parse error when using Python 2 backticks
  • matlab
    • #1830: [matlab] [cpd] Parse error with comments
    • #1793: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifier not working for classes

API Changes

Deprecated APIs

For removal

External Contributions

28-April-2019 - 6.14.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.14.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Dart support

Thanks to the contribution from Maikel Steneker, and built on top of the ongoing efforts to fully support Antlr-based languages, PMD now has CPD support for Dart.

Being based on a proper Antlr grammar, CPD can:

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule AssignmentToNonFinalStatic (java-errorprone) will now report on each assignment made within a constructor rather than on the field declaration. This makes it easier for developers to find the offending statements.

  • The Java rule NoPackage (java-codestyle) will now report additionally enums and annotations that do not have a package declaration.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #1515: [core] Module pmd-lang-test is missing javadoc artifact
    • #1788: [cpd] [core] Use better ClassLoader for ServiceLoader in LanguageFactory
    • #1794: [core] Ruleset Compatibility fails with excluding rules
  • go
    • #1751: [go] Parsing errors encountered with escaped backslash
  • java
    • #1532: [java] NPE with incomplete auxclasspath
    • #1691: [java] Possible Data Race in JavaTypeDefinitionSimple.getGenericType
    • #1729: [java] JavaRuleViolation loses information in className field when class has package-private access level
  • java-bestpractices
    • #1190: [java] UnusedLocalVariable/UnusedPrivateField false-positive
    • #1720: [java] UnusedImports false positive for Javadoc link with array type
  • java-codestyle
    • #1755: [java] False negative in UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn when splitting statements across multiple lines
    • #1782: [java] NoPackage: False Negative for enums
  • java-design
    • #1760: [java] UseObjectForClearerAPI flags private methods

API Changes

No changes.

External Contributions

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

24-February-2019 - 6.12.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.12.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Call For Logo

PMD’s logo was great for a long time. But now we want to take the opportunity with the next major release to change our logo in order to use a more “politically correct” one.

Learn more about how to participate on github issue 1663.

CPD Suppression for Antlr-based languages

ITBA students Matías Fraga, Tomi De Lucca and Lucas Soncini keep working on bringing full Antlr support to PMD. For this release, they have implemented token filtering in an equivalent way as we did for JavaCC languages, adding support for CPD suppressions through CPD-OFF and CPD-ON comments for all Antlr-based languages.

This means, you can now ignore arbitrary blocks of code on:

  • Go
  • Kotlin
  • Swift

Simply start the suppression with any comment (single or multiline) containing CPD-OFF, and resume again with a comment containing CPD-ON.

More information is available in the user documentation.

PL/SQL Grammar improvements

  • In this release, many more parser bugs in our PL/SQL support have been fixed. This adds more complete support for UPDATE statements and subqueries and hierarchical queries in SELECT statements.
  • Support for analytic functions such as LISTAGG has been added.
  • Conditions in WHERE clauses support now REGEX_LIKE and multiset conditions.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule UseTryWithResources (java-bestpractices) searches for try-blocks, that could be changed to a try-with-resources statement. This statement ensures that each resource is closed at the end of the statement and is available since Java 7.

Modified Rules

  • The Apex rule MethodNamingConventions (apex-codestyle) has a new property skipTestMethodUnderscores, which is by default disabled. The new property allows for ignoring all test methods, either using the testMethod modifier or simply annotating them @isTest.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #1462: [core] Failed build on Windows with source zip archive
    • #1559: [core] CPD: Lexical error in file (no file name provided)
    • #1671: [doc] Wrong escaping in suppressing warnings for nopmd-comment
    • #1693: [ui] Improved error reporting for the designer
  • java-bestpractices
    • #808: [java] AccessorMethodGeneration false positives with compile time constants
    • #1405: [java] New Rule: UseTryWithResources - Replace close and IOUtils.closeQuietly with try-with-resources
    • #1555: [java] UnusedImports false positive for method parameter type in @see Javadoc
  • java-codestyle
    • #1543: [java] LinguisticNaming should ignore overriden methods
    • #1547: [java] AtLeastOneConstructorRule: false-positive with lombok.AllArgsConstructor
    • #1624: [java] UseDiamondOperator false positive with var initializer
  • java-design
    • #1641: [java] False-positive with Lombok and inner classes
  • java-errorprone
    • #780: [java] BeanMembersShouldSerializeRule does not recognize lombok accessors
  • java-multithreading
    • #1633: [java] UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter reports commons lang FastDateFormat
  • java-performance
    • #1632: [java] ConsecutiveLiteralAppends false positive over catch
  • plsql
    • #1587: [plsql] ParseException with EXISTS
    • #1589: [plsql] ParseException with subqueries in WHERE clause
    • #1590: [plsql] ParseException when using hierarchical query clause
    • #1656: [plsql] ParseException with analytic functions, trim and subqueries
  • designer
    • #1679: [ui] No default language version selected

API Changes

No changes.

External Contributions

  • #1623: [java] Fix lombok.AllArgsConstructor support - Bobby Wertman
  • #1625: [java] UnusedImports false positive for method parameter type in @see Javadoc - Shubham
  • #1628: [java] LinguisticNaming should ignore overriden methods - Shubham
  • #1634: [java] BeanMembersShouldSerializeRule does not recognize lombok accessors - Shubham
  • #1635: [java] UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter reports commons lang FastDateFormat - Shubham
  • #1637: [java] Compile time constants initialized by literals avoided by AccessorMethodGenerationRule - Shubham
  • #1640: [java] Update instead of override classHasLombokAnnotation flag - Phokham Nonava
  • #1644: [apex] Add property to allow apex test methods to contain underscores - Tom
  • #1645: [java] ConsecutiveLiteralAppends false positive - Shubham
  • #1646: [java] UseDiamondOperator doesn’t work with var - Shubham
  • #1654: [core] Antlr token filter - Tomi De Lucca
  • #1655: [kotlin] Kotlin tokenizer refactor - Lucas Soncini
  • #1686: [doc] Replaced wrong escaping with “>” - Himanshu Pandey

27-January-2019 - 6.11.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.11.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Updated Apex Support

  • The Apex language support has been bumped to version 45 (Spring ‘19). All new language features are now properly parsed and processed.
  • Many nodes now expose more informations, such as the operator for BooleanExpressions. This makes these operators consumable by XPath rules, e.g. //BooleanExpression[@Operator='&&'].

PL/SQL Grammar improvements

  • In this release, many parser bugs in our PL/SQL support have been fixed. This adds e.g. support for table collection expressions (SELECT * FROM TABLE(expr)).
  • Support for parsing insert statements has been added.
  • More improvements are planned for the next release of PMD.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter (java-multithreading) detects unsynchronized usages of static java.text.Format instances. This rule is a more generic replacement of the rule UnsynchronizedStaticDateFormatter which focused just on DateFormat.

  • The new Java rule ForLoopVariableCount (java-bestpractices) checks for the number of control variables in a for-loop. Having a lot of control variables makes it harder to understand what the loop does. The maximum allowed number of variables is by default 1 and can be configured by a property.

  • The new Java rule AvoidReassigningLoopVariables (java-bestpractices) searches for loop variables that are reassigned. Changing the loop variables additionally to the loop itself can lead to hard-to-find bugs.

  • The new Java rule UseDiamondOperator (java-codestyle) looks for constructor calls with explicit type parameters. Since Java 1.7, these type parameters are not necessary anymore, as they can be inferred now.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule LocalVariableCouldBeFinal (java-codestyle) has a new property ignoreForEachDecl, which is by default disabled. The new property allows for ignoring non-final loop variables in a for-each statement.

Deprecated Rules

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #1196: [core] CPD results not consistent between runs
    • #1496 [core] Refactor metrics to be dealt with generically from pmd-core
  • apex
    • #1542: [apex] Include the documentation category
    • #1546: [apex] PMD parsing exception for Apex classes using ‘inherited sharing’ keyword
    • #1568: [apex] AST node attribute @Image not usable / always null in XPath rule / Designer
  • java
    • #1556: [java] Default methods should not be considered abstract
    • #1578: [java] Private field is detected as public inside nested classes in interfaces
  • java-bestpractices
    • #658: [java] OneDeclarationPerLine: False positive for loops
    • #1518: [java] New rule: AvoidReassigningLoopVariable
    • #1519: [java] New rule: ForLoopVariableCount
  • java-codestyle
    • #1513: [java] LocalVariableCouldBeFinal: allow excluding the variable in a for-each loop
    • #1517: [java] New Rule: UseDiamondOperator
  • java-errorprone
    • #1035: [java] ReturnFromFinallyBlock: False positive on lambda expression in finally block
    • #1549: [java] NPE in PMD 6.8.0 InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat
  • java-multithreading
    • #1533: [java] New rule: UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter
  • plsql
    • #1507: [plsql] Parse Exception when using ‘   ’ operator in where clause
    • #1508: [plsql] Parse Exception when using SELECT COUNT(*)
    • #1509: [plsql] Parse Exception with OUTER/INNER Joins
    • #1511: [plsql] Parse Exception with IS NOT NULL
    • #1526: [plsql] ParseException when using TableCollectionExpression
    • #1583: [plsql] Update Set Clause should allow multiple columns
    • #1586: [plsql] Parse Exception when functions are used with LIKE
    • #1588: [plsql] Parse Exception with function calls in WHERE clause

API Changes

External Contributions

  • #1503: [java] Fix for ReturnFromFinallyBlock false-positives - RishabhDeep Singh
  • #1514: [java] LocalVariableCouldBeFinal: allow excluding the variable in a for-each loop - Kris Scheibe
  • #1516: [java] OneDeclarationPerLine: Don’t report multiple variables in a for statement. - Kris Scheibe
  • #1520: [java] New rule: ForLoopVariableCount: check the number of control variables in a for loop - Kris Scheibe
  • #1521: [java] Upgrade to ASM7 for JDK 11 support - Mark Pritchard
  • #1530: [java] New rule: AvoidReassigningLoopVariables - Kris Scheibe
  • #1534: [java] This is the change regarding the usediamondoperator #1517 - hemanshu070
  • #1545: [doc] fixing dead links + tool to check for dead links automatically - Kris Scheibe
  • #1551: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormatRule should not throw NPE for enums - Robbie Martinus
  • #1552: [core] Upgrading Google Gson from 2.5 to 2.8.5 - Thunderforge
  • #1553: [core] Upgrading System Rules dependency from 1.8.0 to 1.19.0 - Thunderforge
  • #1554: [plsql] updates should allow for multiple statements - tashiscool
  • #1584: [core] Fixes 1196: inconsistencies of clones returned by different CPD executions for the same files - Bruno Ferreira

09-December-2018 - 6.10.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.10.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Kotlin support for CPD

Thanks to Maikel Steneker, CPD now supports Kotlin. This means, you can use CPD to find duplicated code in your Kotlin projects.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule UseUnderscoresInNumericLiterals (java-codestyle) verifies that numeric literals over a given length (4 chars by default, but configurable) are using underscores every 3 digits for readability. The rule only applies to Java 7+ codebases.

Modified Rules

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #1284: [doc] Keep record of every currently deprecated API
    • #1318: [test] Kotlin DSL to ease test writing
    • #1328: [ci] Building docs for release fails
    • #1341: [doc] Documentation Error with Regex Properties
    • #1468: [doc] Missing escaping leads to XSS
    • #1471: [core] XMLRenderer: ProcessingErrors from exceptions without a message missing
    • #1477: [core] Analysis cache fails with wildcard classpath entries
  • java
    • #1460: [java] Intermittent PMD failure : PMD processing errors while no violations reported
  • java-bestpractices
    • #647: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule should support this.exception as well as just exception
    • #1435: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert: Support AssertJ soft assertions
  • java-codestyle
    • #1232: [java] Detector for large numbers not separated by _
    • #1372: [java] false positive for UselessQualifiedThis
    • #1440: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifierRule shows incorrect message
  • java-design
    • #1151: [java] ImmutableField false positive with multiple constructors
    • #1483: [java] Cyclo metric should count conditions of for statements correctly
  • java-errorprone
    • #1512: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormatRule causes NPE in lambda and static blocks
  • plsql
    • #1454: [plsql] ParseException for IF/CASE statement with >=, <=, !=

API Changes

Properties framework

The properties framework is about to get a lifting, and for that reason, we need to deprecate a lot of APIs to remove them in 7.0.0. The proposed changes to the API are described on the wiki

Changes to how you define properties

Here’s an example:

// Before 7.0.0, these are equivalent:
IntegerProperty myProperty = new IntegerProperty("score", "Top score value", 1, 100, 40, 3.0f);
IntegerProperty myProperty = IntegerProperty.named("score").desc("Top score value").range(1, 100).defaultValue(40).uiOrder(3.0f);

// They both map to the following in 7.0.0
PropertyDescriptor<Integer> myProperty = PropertyFactory.intProperty("score").desc("Top score value").require(inRange(1, 100)).defaultValue(40);

You’re highly encouraged to migrate to using this new API as soon as possible, to ease your migration to 7.0.0.

Architectural simplifications
Changes to the PropertyDescriptor interface
  • preferredRowCount is deprecated with no intended replacement. It was never implemented, and does not belong in this interface. The methods uiOrder and compareTo(PropertyDescriptor) are deprecated for the same reason. These methods mix presentation logic with business logic and are not necessary for PropertyDescriptors to work. PropertyDescriptor will not extend Comparable<PropertyDescriptor> anymore come 7.0.0.
  • The method propertyErrorFor is deprecated and will be removed with no intended replacement. It’s really just a shortcut for prop.errorFor(rule.getProperty(prop)).
  • T valueFrom(String) and String asDelimitedString(T) are deprecated and will be removed. These were used to serialize and deserialize properties to/from a string, but 7.0.0 will introduce a more flexible XML syntax which will make them obsolete.
  • isMultiValue and type are deprecated and won’t be replaced. The new XML syntax will remove the need for a divide between multi- and single-value properties, and will allow arbitrary types to be represented. Since arbitrary types may be represented, type will become obsolete as it can’t represent generic types, which will nevertheless be representable with the XML syntax. It was only used for documentation, but a new way to document these properties exhaustively will be added with 7.0.0.
  • errorFor is deprecated as its return type will be changed to Optional<String> with the shift to Java 8.

Deprecated APIs

For internalization
For removal

External Contributions

28-October-2018 - 6.9.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.9.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Improved Golang CPD Support

Thanks to the work of ITBA students Matías Fraga, Tomi De Lucca and Lucas Soncini, Golang is now backed by a proper Antlr Grammar. This means CPD is now better at detecting duplicates, as comments are recognized as such and ignored.

New Rules

  • The new PLSQL rule CodeFormat (plsql-codestyle) verifies that PLSQL code is properly formatted. It checks e.g. for correct indentation in select statements and verifies that each parameter is defined on a separate line.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #649: [core] Exclude specific files from command line
    • #1272: [core] Could not find or load main class when using symlinked run.sh
    • #1377: [core] LanguageRegistry uses default class loader when invoking ServiceLocator
    • #1394: [doc] How to configure “-cache "
    • #1412: [doc] Broken link to adding new cpd language documentation
  • apex
    • #1396: [apex] ClassCastException caused by Javadoc
  • java
    • #1330: [java] PMD crashes with java.lang.ClassFormatError: Absent Code attribute in method that is not native or abstract in class file javax/xml/ws/Service
  • java-bestpractices
    • #1202: [java] GuardLogStatement: “There is log block not surrounded by if” doesn’t sound right
    • #1209: [java] UnusedImports false positive for static import with package-private method usage
    • #1343: [java] Update CommentDefaultAccessModifierRule to extend AbstractIgnoredAnnotationRule
    • #1365: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert false positive
    • #1404: [java] UnusedImports false positive with static ondemand import with method call
  • java-codestyle
    • #1199: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName doesn’t flag same package FQCNs
    • #1356: [java] UnnecessaryModifier wrong message public->static
  • java-design
    • #1369: [java] Processing error (ClassCastException) if a TYPE_USE annotation is used on a base class in the “extends” clause
  • jsp
    • #1402: [jsp] JspTokenManager has a problem about jsp scriptlet
  • documentation
    • #1349: [doc] Provide some explanation for WHY duplicate code is bad, like mutations

API Changes

  • PMD has a new CLI option -ignorelist. With that, you can provide a file containing a comma-delimit list of files, that should be excluded during analysis. The ignorelist is applied after the files have been selected via -dir or -filelist, which means, if the file is in both lists, then it will be ignored. Note: there is no corresponding option for the Ant task, since the feature is already available via Ant’s FileSet include/exclude filters.

External Contributions

30-September-2018 - 6.8.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.8.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Drawing a line between private and public API

Until now, all released public members and types were implicitly considered part of PMD’s public API, including inheritance-specific members (protected members, abstract methods). We have maintained those APIs with the goal to preserve full binary compatibility between minor releases, only breaking those APIs infrequently, for major releases.

In order to allow PMD to move forward at a faster pace, this implicit contract will be invalidated with PMD 7.0.0. We now introduce more fine-grained distinctions between the type of compatibility support we guarantee for our libraries, and ways to make them explicit to clients of PMD.

.internal packages and @InternalApi annotation

Internal API is meant for use only by the main PMD codebase. Internal types and methods may be modified in any way, or even removed, at any time.

Any API in a package that contains an .internal segment is considered internal. The @InternalApi annotation will be used for APIs that have to live outside of these packages, e.g. methods of a public type that shouldn’t be used outside of PMD (again, these can be removed anytime).

@ReservedSubclassing

Types marked with the @ReservedSubclassing annotation are only meant to be subclassed by classes within PMD. As such, we may add new abstract methods, or remove protected methods, at any time. All published public members remain supported. The annotation is not inherited, which means a reserved interface doesn’t prevent its implementors to be subclassed.

@Experimental

APIs marked with the @Experimental annotation at the class or method level are subject to change. They can be modified in any way, or even removed, at any time. You should not use or rely on them in any production code. They are purely to allow broad testing and feedback.

@Deprecated

APIs marked with the @Deprecated annotation at the class or method level will remain supported until the next major release but it is recommended to stop using them.

The transition

All currently supported APIs will remain so until 7.0.0. All APIs that are to be moved to .internal packages or hidden will be tagged @InternalApi before that major release, and the breaking API changes will be performed in 7.0.0.

Quickstart Ruleset

PMD 6.8.0 provides a first quickstart ruleset for Java, which you can use as a base ruleset to get your custom ruleset started. You can reference it with rulesets/java/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.

New Rules

  • The new Apex rule ApexDoc (apex-documentation) enforces the inclusion of ApexDoc on classes, interfaces, properties and methods; as well as some sanity rules for such docs (no missing parameters, parameters’ order, and return value). By default, method overrides and test classes are allowed to not include ApexDoc.

Modified Rules

  • The rule MissingSerialVersionUID (java-errorprone) has been modified in order to recognize also missing serialVersionUID fields in abstract classes, if they are serializable. Each individual class in the inheritance chain needs an own serialVersionUID field. See also Should an abstract class have a serialVersionUID. This change might lead to additional violations in existing code bases.

PLSQL

The grammar for PLSQL has been revamped in order to fully parse SELECT INTO, UPDATE, and DELETE statements. Previously such statements have been simply skipped ahead, now PMD is parsing them, giving access to the individual parts of a SELECT-statement, such as the Where-Clause. This might produce new parsing errors where PMD previously could successfully parse PLSQL code. If this happens, please report a new issue to get this problem fixed.

Fixed Issues

  • apex-bestpractices
    • #1348: [apex] AvoidGlobalModifierRule gives warning even when its a webservice - false positive
  • java-codestyle
    • #1329: [java] FieldNamingConventions: false positive in serializable class with serialVersionUID
    • #1334: [java] LinguisticNaming should support AtomicBooleans
  • java-errorprone
    • #1350: [java] MissingSerialVersionUID false-positive on interfaces
    • #1352: [java] MissingSerialVersionUID false-negative with abstract classes
  • java-performance
    • #1325: [java] False positive in ConsecutiveLiteralAppends
  • plsql
    • #1279: [plsql] Support for SELECT INTO

API Changes

  • A couple of methods and fields in net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.AbstractPropertySource have been deprecated, as they are replaced by already existing functionality or expose internal implementation details: propertyDescriptors, propertyValuesByDescriptor, copyPropertyDescriptors(), copyPropertyValues(), ignoredProperties(), usesDefaultValues(), useDefaultValueFor().

  • Some methods in net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.PropertySource have been deprecated as well: usesDefaultValues(), useDefaultValueFor(), ignoredProperties().

  • The class net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.AbstractDelegateRule has been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0. It is internally only in use by RuleReference.

  • The default constructor of net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.RuleReference has been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0. RuleReferences should only be created by providing a Rule and a RuleSetReference. Furthermore the following methods are deprecated: setRuleReference(), hasOverriddenProperty(), usesDefaultValues(), useDefaultValueFor().

External Contributions

02-September-2018 - 6.7.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.7.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule OneDeclarationPerLine (java-bestpractices) has been revamped to consider not only local variable declarations, but field declarations too.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule LinguisticNaming (java-codestyle) detects cases, when a method name indicates it returns a boolean (such as isSmall()) but it doesn’t. Besides method names, the rule also checks field and variable names. It also checks, that getters return something but setters won’t. The rule has several properties with which it can be customized.

  • The new PL/SQL rule ForLoopNaming (plsql-codestyle) enforces a naming convention for “for loops”. Both “cursor for loops” and “index for loops” are covered. The rule can be customized via patterns. By default, short variable names are reported.

  • The new Java rule FieldNamingConventions (java-codestyle) detects field names that don’t comply to a given convention. It defaults to standard Java convention of using camelCase, but can be configured with ease for e.g. constants or static fields.

  • The new Apex rule OneDeclarationPerLine (apex-codestyle) enforces declaring a single field / variable per line; or per statement if the strictMode property is set. It’s an Apex equivalent of the already existing Java rule of the same name.

Deprecated Rules

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #1191: [core] Test Framework: Sort violations by line/column
    • #1283: [core] Deprecate ReportTree
    • #1288: [core] No supported build listeners found with Gradle
    • #1300: [core] PMD stops processing file completely, if one rule in a rule chain fails
    • #1317: [ci] Coveralls hasn’t built the project since June 25th
  • java-bestpractices
    • #940: [java] JUnit 4 false positives for JUnit 5 tests
    • #1267: [java] MissingOverrideRule: Avoid NoClassDefFoundError with incomplete classpath
    • #1323: [java] AvoidUsingHardCodedIP ignores match pattern
    • #1327: [java] AvoidUsingHardCodedIP false positive for “:bee”
  • java-codestyle
    • #1255: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName false positive: static method on shadowed implicitly imported class
    • #1258: [java] False positive “UselessParentheses” for parentheses that contain assignment
  • java-errorprone
    • #1078: [java] MissingSerialVersionUID rule does not seem to catch inherited classes
  • java-performance
    • #1291: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat false positive: too many arguments with string concatenation operator
    • #1298: [java] RedundantFieldInitializer - NumberFormatException with Long
  • jsp
    • #1274: [jsp] Support EL in tag attributes
    • #1276: [jsp] add support for jspf and tag extensions
  • plsql
    • #681: [plsql] Parse error with Cursor For Loop

API Changes

  • All classes in the package net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.report have been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0. This includes the class net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.report.ReportTree. The reason is, that this class is very specific to Java and not suitable for other languages. It has only been used for YAHTMLRenderer, which has been rewritten to work without these classes.

  • The nodes RUNSIGNEDSHIFT and RSIGNEDSHIFT are deprecated and will be removed from the AST with PMD 7.0.0. These represented the operator of ShiftExpression in two cases out of three, but they’re not needed and make ShiftExpression inconsistent. The operator of a ShiftExpression is now accessible through ShiftExpression#getOperator.

External Contributions

  • #109: [java] Add two linguistics rules under naming - Arda Aslan
  • #1254: [ci] [GSoC] Integrating the danger and pmdtester to travis CI - BBG
  • #1258: [java] Use typeof in MissingSerialVersionUID - krichter722
  • #1264: [cpp] Fix NullPointerException in CPPTokenizer:99 - Rafael Cortês
  • #1277: [jsp] #1276 add support for jspf and tag extensions - Jordi Llach
  • #1275: [jsp] Issue #1274 - Support EL in tag attributes - Jordi Llach
  • #1278: [ci] [GSoC] Use pmdtester 1.0.0.pre.beta3 - BBG
  • #1289: [java] UselessParentheses: Fix false positive with assignments - cobratbq
  • #1290: [docs] [GSoC] Create the documentation about pmdtester - BBG
  • #1256: [java] #940 Avoid JUnit 4 false positives for JUnit 5 tests - Alex Shesterov
  • #1315: [apex] Add OneDeclarationPerStatement rule - Jeff Hube

29-July-2018 - 6.6.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.6.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Java 11 Support

PMD is now able to parse the local-variable declaration syntax var xxx, that has been extended for lambda parameters with Java 11 via JEP 323: Local-Variable Syntax for Lambda Parameters.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule LocalVariableNamingConventions (java-codestyle) detects local variable names that don’t comply to a given convention. It defaults to standard Java convention of using camelCase, but can be configured. Special cases can be configured for final variables and caught exceptions’ names.

  • The new Java rule FormalParameterNamingConventions (java-codestyle) detects formal parameter names that don’t comply to a given convention. It defaults to standard Java convention of using camelCase, but can be configured. Special cases can be configured for final parameters and lambda parameters (considering whether they are explicitly typed or not).

Modified Rules

Fixed Issues

  • core
    • #1178: [core] “Unsupported build listener” in gradle build
    • #1225: [core] Error in sed expression on line 82 of run.sh while detecting installed version of Java
  • doc
    • #1215: [doc] TOC links don’t work?
  • java-codestyle
    • #1211: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifier false positive with nested interfaces (regression from 6.4.0)
    • #1216: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName false positive for the same name method
  • java-design
    • #1217: [java] CyclomaticComplexityRule counts ?-operator twice
    • #1226: [java] NPath complexity false negative due to overflow
  • plsql
    • #980: [plsql] ParseException for CREATE TABLE
    • #981: [plsql] ParseException when parsing VIEW
    • #1047: [plsql] ParseException when parsing EXECUTE IMMEDIATE
  • ui
    • #1233: [ui] XPath autocomplete arrows on first and last items

API Changes

  • The findDescendantsOfType methods in net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.AbstractNode no longer search for exact type matches, but will match subclasses, too. That means, it’s now possible to look for abstract node types such as AbstractJavaTypeNode and not only for it’s concrete subtypes.

External Contributions

26-June-2018 - 6.5.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.5.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

New Rules

  • The new Apex rule AvoidNonExistentAnnotations (apex-errorprone) detects usages non-officially supported annotations. Apex supported non existent annotations for legacy reasons. In the future, use of such non-existent annotations could result in broken Apex code that will not compile. A full list of supported annotations can be found here

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule UnnecessaryModifier (java-codestyle) now detects enum constrcutors with explicit private modifier. The rule now produces better error messages letting you know exactly which modifiers are redundant at each declaration.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #1119: [doc] Make the landing page of the documentation website more useful
    • #1168: [core] xml renderer schema definitions (#538) break included xslt files
    • #1173: [core] Some characters in CPD are not shown correctly.
    • #1193: [core] Designer doesn’t start with run.sh
  • ecmascript
    • #861: [ecmascript] InnaccurateNumericLiteral false positive with hex literals
  • java
    • #1074: [java] MissingOverrideRule exception when analyzing PMD under Java 9
    • #1174: [java] CommentUtil.multiLinesIn() could lead to StringIndexOutOfBoundsException
  • java-bestpractices
    • #651: [java] SwitchStmtsShouldHaveDefault should be aware of enum types
    • #869: [java] GuardLogStatement false positive on return statements and Math.log
  • java-codestyle
    • #667: [java] Make AtLeastOneConstructor Lombok-aware
    • #1154: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifierRule FP with nested enums
    • #1158: [java] Fix IdenticalCatchBranches false positive
    • #1186: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName doesn’t detect java.lang FQ names as violations
  • java-design
    • #1200: [java] New default NcssCount method report level is drastically reduced from values of deprecated NcssMethodCount and NcssTypeCount
  • xml
    • #715: [xml] ProjectVersionAsDependencyVersion false positive

API Changes

  • The utility class net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.ast.CommentUtil has been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0. Its methods have been intended to parse javadoc tags. A more useful solution will be added around the AST node FormalComment, which contains as children JavadocElement nodes, which in turn provide access to the JavadocTag.

    All comment AST nodes (FormalComment, MultiLineComment, SingleLineComment) have a new method getFilteredComment() which provide access to the comment text without the leading /* markers.

  • The method AbstractCommentRule.tagsIndicesIn() has been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0. It is not very useful, since it doesn’t extract the information in a useful way. You would still need check, which tags have been found, and with which data they might be accompanied.

External Contributions

29-May-2018 - 6.4.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.4.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Java 10 Support

PMD is now able to understand local-variable type inference as introduced by Java 10. Simple type resolution features are available, e.g. the type of the variable s is inferred correctly as String:

var s = "Java 10";

XPath Type Resolution Functions

For some time now PMD has supported Type Resolution, and exposed this functionality to XPath rules for the Java language with the typeof function. This function however had a number of shortcomings:

  • It would take a first arg with the name to match if types couldn’t be resolved. In all cases this was @Image but was still required.
  • It required 2 separate arguments for the Fully Qualified Class Name and the simple name of the class against which to test.
  • If only the Fully Qualified Class Name was provided, no simple name check was performed (not documented, but abused on some rules to “fix” some false positives).

In this release we are deprecating typeof in favor of a simpler typeIs function, which behaves exactly as the old typeof when given all 3 arguments.

typeIs receives a single parameter, which is the fully qualified name of the class to test against.

So, calls such as:

//ClassOrInterfaceType[typeof(@Image, 'junit.framework.TestCase', 'TestCase')]

can now we expressed much more concisely as:

//ClassOrInterfaceType[typeIs('junit.framework.TestCase')]

With this change, we also allow to check against array types by just appending [] to the fully qualified class name. These can be repeated for arrays of arrays (e.g. byte[][] or java.lang.String[]).

Additionally, we introduce the companion function typeIsExactly, that receives the same parameters as typeIs, but checks for exact type matches, without considering the type hierarchy. That is, the test typeIsExactly('junit.framework.TestCase') will match only if the context node is an instance of TestCase, but not if it’s an instance of a subclass of TestCase. Be aware then, that using that method with abstract types will never match.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule HardCodedCryptoKey (java-security) detects hard coded keys used for encryption. It is recommended to store keys outside of the source code.

  • The new Java rule IdenticalCatchBranches (java-codestyle) finds catch blocks, that catch different exception but perform the same exception handling and thus can be collapsed into a multi-catch try statement.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule JUnit4TestShouldUseTestAnnotation (java-bestpractices) has a new parameter “testClassPattern”. It is used to distinguish test classes from other classes and avoid false positives. By default, any class, that has “Test” in its name, is considered a test class.

  • The Java rule CommentDefaultAccessModifier (java-codestyle) allows now by default the comment “/* package */ in addition to “/* default */. This behavior can still be adjusted by setting the property regex.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #1018: [java] Performance degradation of 250% between 6.1.0 and 6.2.0
    • #1145: [core] JCommander’s help text for option -min is wrong
  • java
    • #672: [java] Support exact type matches for type resolution from XPath
    • #743: [java] Prepare for Java 10
    • #1077: [java] Analyzing enum with lambda passed in constructor fails with “The enclosing scope must exist.”
    • #1115: [java] Simplify xpath typeof syntax
    • #1131: [java] java.lang.ClassFormatError: Absent Code attribute in method that is not native or abstract in class file javax/faces/application/FacesMessage$Severity
  • java-bestpractices
    • #527: [java] False Alarm of JUnit4TestShouldUseTestAnnotation on Predicates
    • #1063: [java] MissingOverride is triggered in illegal places
  • java-codestyle
    • #720: [java] ShortVariable should whitelist lambdas
    • #955: [java] Detect identical catch statements
    • #1114: [java] Star import overwritten by explicit import is not correctly handled
    • #1064: [java] ClassNamingConventions suggests to add Util suffix for simple exception wrappers
    • #1065: [java] ClassNamingConventions shouldn’t prohibit numbers in class names
    • #1067: [java] [6.3.0] PrematureDeclaration false-positive
    • #1096: [java] ClassNamingConventions is too ambitious on finding utility classes
  • java-design
    • #824: [java] UseUtilityClass false positive when extending
    • #1021: [java] False positive for DoNotExtendJavaLangError
    • #1097: [java] False negative in AvoidThrowingRawExceptionTypes
  • java-performance
    • #1051: [java] ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse false-negative
    • #1098: [java] Simplify LongInstantiation, IntegerInstantiation, ByteInstantiation, and ShortInstantiation using type resolution
    • #1125: [java] Improve message of InefficientEmptyStringCheck for String.trim().isEmpty()
  • doc
    • #999: [doc] Add a header before the XPath expression in rules
    • #1082: [doc] Multifile analysis doc is invalid
  • vf-security
    • #1100: [vf] URLENCODE is ignored as valid escape method

API Changes

  • The following classes in package net.sourceforge.pmd.benchmark have been deprecated: Benchmark, Benchmarker, BenchmarkReport, BenchmarkResult, RuleDuration, StringBuilderCR and TextReport. Their API is not supported anymore and is disconnected from the internals of PMD. Use the newer API based around TimeTracker instead, which can be found in the same package.
  • The class net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.xpath.TypeOfFunction has been deprecated. Use the newer TypeIsFunction in the same package.
  • The typeof methdos in net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.xpath.JavaFunctions have been deprecated. Use the newer typeIs method in the same class instead..
  • The methods isA, isEither and isNeither of net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.typeresolution.TypeHelper. Use the new isExactlyAny and isExactlyNone methods in the same class instead.

External Contributions

29-April-2018 - 6.3.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.3.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Tree Traversal Revision

As described in #904, when searching for child nodes of the AST methods such as hasDescendantOfType, getFirstDescendantOfType and findDescendantsOfType were found to behave inconsistently, not all of them honoring find boundaries; that is, nodes that define a self-contained entity which should be considered separately (think of lambdas, nested classes, anonymous classes, etc.). We have modified these methods to ensure all of them honor find boundaries.

This change implies several false positives / unexpected results (ie: ASTBlockStatement falsely returning true to isAllocation()) have been fixed; and lots of searches are now restricted to smaller search areas, which improves performance (depending on the project, we have measured up to 10% improvements during Type Resolution, Symbol Table analysis, and some rules’ application).

Naming Rules Enhancements

  • ClassNamingConventions (java-codestyle) has been enhanced to allow granular configuration of naming conventions for different kinds of type declarations (eg enum or abstract class). Each kind of declaration can use its own naming convention using a regex property. See the rule’s documentation for more info about configuration and default conventions.

  • MethodNamingConventions (java-codestyle) has been enhanced in the same way.

CPD Suppression

Back in PMD 5.6.0 we introduced the ability to suppress CPD warnings in Java using comments, by including CPD-OFF (to start ignoring code), or CPD-ON (to resume analysis) during CPD execution. This has proved to be much more flexible and versatile than the old annotation-based approach, and has since been the preferred way to suppress CPD warnings.

On this occasion, we are extending support for comment-based suppressions to many other languages:

  • C/C++
  • Ecmascript / Javascript
  • Matlab
  • Objective-C
  • PL/SQL
  • Python

So for instance, in Python we could now do:

class BaseHandler(object):
    def __init__(self):
        # some unignored code

        # tell cpd to start ignoring code - CPD-OFF

        # mission critical code, manually loop unroll
        GoDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        GoDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        GoDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        GoDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        GoDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        GoDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);

        # resume CPD analysis - CPD-ON

        # further code will *not* be ignored

Other languages are equivalent.

Swift 4.1 Support

Thanks to major contributions from kenji21 the Swift grammar has been updated to support Swift 4.1. This is a major update, since the old grammar was quite dated, and we are sure all iOS developers will enjoy it.

Unfortunately, this change is not compatible. The grammar elements that have been removed (ie: the keywords __FILE__, __LINE__, __COLUMN__ and __FUNCTION__) are no longer supported. We don’t usually introduce such drastic / breaking changes in minor releases, however, given that the whole Swift ecosystem pushes hard towards always using the latest versions, and that Swift needs all code and libraries to be currently compiling against the same Swift version, we felt strongly this change was both safe and necessary to be shipped as soon as possible. We had great feedback from the community during the process but if you have a legitimate use case for older Swift versions, please let us know on our Issue Tracker.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule InsecureCryptoIv (java-security) detects hard coded initialization vectors used in cryptographic operations. It is recommended to use a randomly generated IV.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule UnnecessaryConstructor (java-codestyle) has been rewritten as a Java rule (previously it was a XPath-based rule). It supports a new property ignoredAnnotations and ignores by default empty constructors, that are annotated with javax.inject.Inject. Additionally, it detects now also unnecessary private constructors in enums.

  • The property checkNativeMethods of the Java rule MethodNamingConventions (java-codestyle) is now deprecated, as it is now superseded by nativePattern. Support for that property will be maintained until 7.0.0.

  • The Java rule ControlStatementBraces (java-codestyle) supports a new boolean property checkSingleIfStmt. When unset, the rule won’t report if statements which lack braces, if the statement is not part of an if ... else if chain. This property defaults to true.

Deprecated Rules

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #695: [core] Extend comment-based suppression to all JavaCC languages
    • #988: [core] FileNotFoundException for missing classes directory with analysis cache enabled
    • #1036: [core] Non-XML output breaks XML-based CLI integrations
  • apex-errorprone
    • #776: [apex] AvoidHardcodingId false positives
  • documentation
    • #994: [doc] Delete duplicate page contributing.md on the website
    • #1057: [doc] Documentation of ignoredAnnotations property is misleading
  • java
    • #894: [java] Maven PMD plugin fails to process some files without any explanation
    • #899: [java] JavaTypeDefinitionSimple.toString can cause NPEs
    • #1020: [java] The CyclomaticComplexity rule runs forever in 6.2.0
    • #1030: [java] NoClassDefFoundError when analyzing PMD with PMD
    • #1061: [java] Update ASM to handle Java 10 bytecode
  • java-bestpractices
    • #370: [java] GuardLogStatementJavaUtil not considering lambdas
    • #558: [java] ProperLogger Warnings for enums
    • #719: [java] Unused Code: Java 8 receiver parameter with an internal class
    • #1009: [java] JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage - False positive with assertEquals and JUnit5
  • java-codestyle
    • #1003: [java] UnnecessaryConstructor triggered on required empty constructor (Dagger @Inject)
    • #1023: [java] False positive for useless parenthesis
    • #1004: [java] ControlStatementBraces is missing checkIfStmt property
  • java-design
    • #1056: [java] Property ignoredAnnotations does not work for SingularField and ImmutableField
  • java-errorprone
    • #629: [java] NullAssignment false positive
    • #816: [java] SingleMethodSingleton false positives with inner classes
  • java-performance
    • #586: [java] AvoidUsingShortType erroneously triggered on overrides of 3rd party methods
  • swift
    • #678: [swift][cpd] Exception when running for Swift 4 code (KeyPath)

External Contributions

26-March-2018 - 6.2.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.2.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Ecmascript (JavaScript)

The Rhino Library has been upgraded from version 1.7.7 to version 1.7.7.2.

Detailed changes for changed in Rhino can be found:

Both are bugfixing releases.

Disable Incremental Analysis

Some time ago, we added support for Incremental Analysis. On PMD 6.0.0, we started to add warns when not using it, as we strongly believe it’s a great improvement to our user’s experience as analysis time is greatly reduced; and in the future we plan to have it enabled by default. However, we realize some scenarios don’t benefit from it (ie: CI jobs), and having the warning logged can be noisy and cause confusion.

To this end, we have added a new flag to allow you to explicitly disable incremental analysis. On CLI, this is the new -no-cache flag. On Ant, there is a noCache attribute for the <pmd> task.

On both scenarios, disabling the cache takes precedence over setting a cache location.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule MissingOverride (category bestpractices) detects overridden and implemented methods, which are not marked with the @Override annotation. Annotating overridden methods with @Override ensures at compile time that the method really overrides one, which helps refactoring and clarifies intent.

  • The new Java rule UnnecessaryAnnotationValueElement (category codestyle) detects annotations with a single element (value) that explicitely names it. That is, doing @SuppressWarnings(value = "unchecked") would be flagged in favor of @SuppressWarnings("unchecked").

  • The new Java rule ControlStatementBraces (category codestyle) enforces the presence of braces on control statements where they are optional. Properties allow to customize which statements are required to have braces. This rule replaces the now deprecated rules WhileLoopMustUseBraces, ForLoopMustUseBraces, IfStmtMustUseBraces, and IfElseStmtMustUseBraces. More than covering the use cases of those rules, this rule also supports do ... while statements and case labels of switch statements (disabled by default).

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule CommentContentRule (java-documentation) previously had the property wordsAreRegex. But this property never had been implemented and is removed now.

  • The Java rule UnusedPrivateField (java-bestpractices) now has a new ignoredAnnotations property that allows to configure annotations that imply the field should be ignored. By default @java.lang.Deprecated and @javafx.fxml.FXML are ignored.

  • The Java rule UnusedPrivateMethod (java-bestpractices) now has a new ignoredAnnotations property that allows to configure annotations that imply the method should be ignored. By default @java.lang.Deprecated is ignored.

  • The Java rule ImmutableField (java-design) now has a new ignoredAnnotations property that allows to configure annotations that imply the method should be ignored. By default several lombok annotations are ignored

  • The Java rule SingularField (java-design) now has a new ignoredAnnotations property that allows to configure annotations that imply the method should be ignored. By default several lombok annotations are ignored

Deprecated Rules

  • The Java rules WhileLoopMustUseBraces, ForLoopMustUseBraces, IfStmtMustUseBraces, and IfElseStmtMustUseBraces are deprecated. They will be replaced by the new rule ControlStatementBraces, in the category codestyle.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #928: [core] PMD build failure on Windows
  • java-bestpracrtices
    • #907: [java] UnusedPrivateField false-positive with @FXML
    • #963: [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly not triggered from variadic functions
  • java-codestyle
    • #974: [java] Merge *StmtMustUseBraces rules
    • #983: [java] Detect annotations with single value element
  • java-design
    • #832: [java] AvoidThrowingNullPointerException documentation suggestion
    • #837: [java] CFGs of declared but not called lambdas are treated as parts of an enclosing method’s CFG
    • #839: [java] SignatureDeclareThrowsException’s IgnoreJUnitCompletely property not honored for constructors
    • #968: [java] UseUtilityClassRule reports false positive with lombok NoArgsConstructor
  • documentation
    • #978: [core] Broken link in CONTRIBUTING.md
    • #992: [core] Include info about rule doc generation in “Writing Documentation” md page

API Changes

  • A new CLI switch, -no-cache, disables incremental analysis and the related suggestion. This overrides the -cache option. The corresponding Ant task parameter is noCache.

  • The static method PMDParameters.transformParametersIntoConfiguration(PMDParameters) is now deprecated, for removal in 7.0.0. The new instance method PMDParameters.toConfiguration() replaces it.

  • The method ASTConstructorDeclaration.getParameters() has been deprecated in favor of the new method getFormalParameters(). This method is available for both ASTConstructorDeclaration and ASTMethodDeclaration.

External Contributions

  • #941: [java] Use char notation to represent a character to improve performance - reudismam
  • #943: [java] UnusedPrivateField false-positive with @FXML - BBG
  • #951: [java] Add ignoredAnnotations property to unusedPrivateMethod rule - BBG
  • #952: [java] SignatureDeclareThrowsException’s IgnoreJUnitCompletely property not honored for constructors - BBG
  • #958: [java] Refactor how we ignore annotated elements in rules - BBG
  • #965: [java] Make Varargs trigger ArrayIsStoredDirectly - Stephen
  • #967: [doc] Issue 959: fixed broken link to XPath Rule Tutorial - Andrey Mochalov
  • #969: [java] Issue 968 Add logic to handle lombok private constructors with utility classes - Kirk Clemens
  • #970: [java] Fixed inefficient use of keySet iterator instead of entrySet iterator - Andrey Mochalov
  • #984: [java] issue983 Add new UnnecessaryAnnotationValueElement rule - Kirk Clemens
  • #989: [core] Update Contribute.md to close Issue #978 - Bolarinwa Saheed Olayemi
  • #990: [java] Updated Doc on AvoidThrowingNullPointerException to close Issue #832 - Bolarinwa Saheed Olayemi
  • #993: [core] Update writing_documentation.md to fix Issue #992 - Bolarinwa Saheed Olayemi

25-February-2018 - 6.1.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.1.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Designer UI

The Designer now supports configuring properties for XPath based rule development. The Designer is still under development and any feedback is welcome.

You can start the designer via run.sh designer or designer.bat.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #569: [core] XPath support requires specific toString implementations
    • #795: [cpd] java.lang.OutOfMemoryError
    • #848: [doc] Test failures when building pmd-doc under Windows
    • #872: [core] NullPointerException at FileDataSource.glomName()
    • #854: [ci] Use Java9 for building PMD
  • doc
    • #791: [doc] Documentation site reorganisation
    • #891: [doc] Apex @SuppressWarnings should use single quotes instead of double quotes
    • #909: [doc] Please add new PMD Eclipse Plugin to tool integration section
  • java
    • #825: [java] Excessive*Length ignores too much
    • #888: [java] ParseException occurs with valid ‘<>’ in Java 1.8 mode
    • #920: [java] Update valid identifiers in grammar
  • java-bestpractices
    • #784: [java] ForLoopCanBeForeach false-positive
    • #925: [java] UnusedImports false positive for static import
  • java-design
    • #855: [java] ImmutableField false-positive with lambdas
  • java-documentation
    • #877: [java] CommentRequired valid rule configuration causes PMD error
  • java-errorprone
    • #885: [java] CompareObjectsWithEqualsRule trigger by enum1 != enum2
  • java-performance
    • #541: [java] ConsecutiveLiteralAppends with types other than string
  • scala
    • #853: [scala] Upgrade scala version to support Java 9
  • xml
    • #739: [xml] IllegalAccessException when accessing attribute using Saxon on JRE 9

API Changes

Changes to the Node interface

The method getXPathNodeName is added to the Node interface, which removes the use of the toString of a node to get its XPath element name (see #569). A default implementation is provided in AbstractNode, to stay compatible with existing implementors.

The toString method of a Node is not changed for the time being, and still produces the name of the XPath node. That behaviour may however change in future major releases, e.g. to produce a more useful message for debugging.

Changes to CPD renderers

The interface net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.Renderer has been deprecated. A new interface net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.renderer.CPDRenderer has been introduced to replace it. The main difference is that the new interface is meant to render directly to a java.io.Writer rather than to a String. This allows to greatly reduce the memory footprint of CPD, as on large projects, with many duplications, it was causing OutOfMemoryErrors (see #795).

net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.FileReporter has also been deprecated as part of this change, as it’s no longer needed.

External Contributions

21-January-2018 - 6.0.1

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.0.1.

This is a bug fixing release.

Table Of Contents

Additional information about the new introduced rule categories

With the release of PMD 6.0.0, all rules have been sorted into one of the following eight categories:

  1. Best Practices: These are rules which enforce generally accepted best practices.
  2. Code Style: These rules enforce a specific coding style.
  3. Design: Rules that help you discover design issues.
  4. Documentation: These rules are related to code documentation.
  5. Error Prone: Rules to detect constructs that are either broken, extremely confusing or prone to runtime errors.
  6. Multithreading: These are rules that flag issues when dealing with multiple threads of execution.
  7. Performance: Rules that flag suboptimal code.
  8. Security: Rules that flag potential security flaws.

Please note, that not every category in every language may have a rule. There might be categories with no rules at all, such as category/java/security.xml, which has currently no rules. There are even languages, which only have rules of one category (e.g. category/xml/errorprone.xml).

You can find the information about available rules in the generated rule documentation, available at https://pmd.github.io/6.0.1/.

In order to help migrate to the new category scheme, the new name for the old, deprecated rule names will be logged as a warning. See PR #865. Please note, that the deprecated rule names will keep working throughout PMD 6. You can upgrade to PMD 6 without the immediate need to migrate your current ruleset. That backwards compatibility will be maintained until PMD 7.0.0 is released.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #842: [core] Use correct java bootclasspath for compiling
  • apex-errorprone
    • #792: [apex] AvoidDirectAccessTriggerMap incorrectly detects array access in classes
  • apex-security
    • #788: [apex] Method chaining breaks ApexCRUDViolation
  • doc
    • #782: [doc] Wrong information in the Release Notes about the Security ruleset
    • #794: [doc] Broken documentation links for 6.0.0
  • java
    • #793: [java] Parser error with private method in nested classes in interfaces
    • #814: [java] UnsupportedClassVersionError is failure instead of a warning
    • #831: [java] StackOverflow in JavaTypeDefinitionSimple.toString
  • java-bestpractices
    • #783: [java] GuardLogStatement regression
    • #800: [java] ForLoopCanBeForeach NPE when looping on this object
  • java-codestyle
    • #817: [java] UnnecessaryModifierRule crashes on valid code
  • java-design
    • #785: [java] NPE in DataClass rule
    • #812: [java] Exception applying rule DataClass
    • #827: [java] GodClass crashes with java.lang.NullPointerException
  • java-performance
    • #841: [java] InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration NumberFormatException
  • java-typeresolution
    • #866: [java] rulesets/java/typeresolution.xml lists non-existent rules

API Changes

  • The constant net.sourceforge.pmd.PMD.VERSION has been deprecated and will be removed with PMD 7.0.0. Please use net.sourceforge.pmd.PMDVersion.VERSION instead.

External Contributions

15-December-2017 - 6.0.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.0.0.

This is a major release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

New Rule Designer

Thanks to Clément Fournier, we now have a new rule designer GUI, which is based on JavaFX. It replaces the old designer and can be started via

  • bin/run.sh designer (on Unix-like platform such as Linux and Mac OS X)
  • bin\designer.bat (on Windows)

Note: At least Java8 is required for the designer. The old designer is still available as designerold but will be removed with the next major release.

Java 9 support

The Java grammar has been updated to support analyzing Java 9 projects:

  • private methods in interfaces are possible
  • The underscore “_” is considered an invalid identifier
  • Diamond operator for anonymous classes
  • The module declarations in module-info.java can be parsed
  • Concise try-with-resources statements are supported

Java 9 support is enabled by default. You can switch back to an older java version via the command line, e.g. -language java -version 1.8.

Revamped Apex CPD

We are now using the Apex Jorje Lexer to tokenize Apex code for CPD. This change means:

  • All comments are now ignored for CPD. This is consistent with how other languages such as Java and Groovy work.
  • Tokenization honors the language specification, which improves accuracy.

CPD will therefore have less false positives and false negatives.

Java Type Resolution

As part of Google Summer of Code 2017, Bendegúz Nagy worked on type resolution for Java. For this release he has extended support for method calls for both instance and static methods.

Method shadowing and overloading are supported, as are varargs. However, the selection of the target method upon the presence of generics and type inference is still work in progress. Expect it in forecoming releases.

As for fields, the basic support was in place for release 5.8.0, but has now been expanded to support static fields.

Metrics Framework

As part of Google Summer of Code 2017, Clément Fournier is worked on the new metrics framework for object-oriented metrics.

There are already a couple of metrics (e.g. ATFD, WMC, Cyclo, LoC) implemented. More metrics are planned. Based on those metrics, rules like “GodClass” detection could be implemented more easily. The following rules benefit from the metrics framework: NcssCount (java), NPathComplexity (java), CyclomaticComplexity (both java and apex).

The Metrics framework has been abstracted and is available in pmd-core for other languages. With this PMD release, the metrics framework is supported for both Java and Apex.

Error Reporting

A number of improvements on error reporting have taken place, meaning changes to some of the report formats.

Also of note, the xml report now provides a XML Schema definition, allowing easier parsing and validation.

Processing Errors

Processing errors can now provide not only the message previously included on some reports, but also a full stacktrace. This will allow better error reports when providing feedback to the PMD team and help in debugging issues.

The report formats providing full stacktrace of errors are:

  • html
  • summaryhtml
  • textcolor
  • vbhtml
  • xml
Configuration Errors

For a long time reports have been notified of configuration errors on rules, but they have remained hidden. On a push to make these more evident to users, and help them get the best results out of PMD, we have started to include them on the reports.

So far, only reports that include processing errors are showing configuration errors. In other words, the report formats providing configuration error reporting are:

  • csv
  • html
  • summaryhtml
  • text
  • textcolor
  • vbhtml
  • xml

As we move forward we will be able to detect and report more configuration errors (ie: incomplete auxclasspath) and include them to such reports.

Apex Rule Suppression

Apex violations can now be suppressed very similarly to how it’s done in Java, by making use of a @SuppressWarnings annotation.

Supported syntax includes:

@SupressWarnings('PMD') // to supress all Apex rules
@SupressWarnings('all') // to supress all Apex rules
@SupressWarnings('PMD.ARuleName') // to supress only the rule named ARuleName
@SupressWarnings('PMD.ARuleName, PMD.AnotherRuleName') // to supress only the rule named ARuleName or AnotherRuleName

Notice this last scenario is slightly different to the Java syntax. This is due to differences in the Apex grammar for annotations.

Rule Categories

All built-in rules have been sorted into one of eight categories:

  1. Best Practices: These are rules which enforce generally accepted best practices.
  2. Code Style: These rules enforce a specific coding style.
  3. Design: Rules that help you discover design issues.
  4. Documentation: These rules are related to code documentation.
  5. Error Prone: Rules to detect constructs that are either broken, extremely confusing or prone to runtime errors.
  6. Multithreading: These are rules that flag issues when dealing with multiple threads of execution.
  7. Performance: Rules that flag suboptimal code.
  8. Security: Rules that flag potential security flaws.

These categories help you to find rules and figure out the relevance and impact for your project.

All rules have been moved accordingly, e.g. the rule “JumbledIncrementer”, which was previously defined in the ruleset “java-basic” has now been moved to the “Error Prone” category. The new rule reference to be used is <rule ref="category/java/errorprone.xml/JumbledIncrementer"/>.

The old rulesets like “java-basic” are still kept for backwards-compatibility but will be removed eventually. The rule reference documentation has been updated to reflect these changes.

New Rules

  • The new Java rule NcssCount (category design) replaces the three rules “NcssConstructorCount”, “NcssMethodCount”, and “NcssTypeCount”. The new rule uses the metrics framework to achieve the same. It has two properties, to define the report level for method and class sizes separately. Constructors and methods are considered the same.

  • The new Java rule DoNotExtendJavaLangThrowable (category errorprone) is a companion for the java-strictexception.xml/DoNotExtendJavaLangError, detecting direct extensions of java.lang.Throwable.

  • The new Java rule ForLoopCanBeForeach (category errorprone) helps to identify those for-loops that can be safely refactored into for-each-loops available since java 1.5.

  • The new Java rule AvoidFileStream (category performance) helps to identify code relying on FileInputStream / FileOutputStream which, by using a finalizer, produces extra / unnecessary overhead to garbage collection, and should be replaced with Files.newInputStream / Files.newOutputStream available since java 1.7.

  • The new Java rule DataClass (category design) detects simple data-holders without behaviour. This might indicate that the behaviour is scattered elsewhere and the data class exposes the internal data structure, which breaks encapsulation.

  • The new Apex rule AvoidDirectAccessTriggerMap (category errorprone) helps to identify direct array access to triggers, which can produce bugs by either accessing non-existing indexes, or leaving them out. You should use for-each-loops instead.

  • The new Apex rule AvoidHardcodingId (category errorprone) detects hardcoded strings that look like identifiers and flags them. Record IDs change between environments, meaning hardcoded ids are bound to fail under a different setup.

  • The new Apex rule CyclomaticComplexity (category design) detects overly complex classes and methods. The report threshold can be configured separately for classes and methods.

  • A whole bunch of new rules has been added to Apex. They all fit into the category errorprone. The 5 rules are migrated for Apex from the equivalent Java rules and include:
    • EmptyCatchBlock to detect catch blocks completely ignoring exceptions.
    • EmptyIfStmt for if blocks with no content, that can be safely removed.
    • EmptyTryOrFinallyBlock for empty try / finally blocks that can be safely removed.
    • EmptyWhileStmt for empty while loops that can be safely removed.
    • EmptyStatementBlock for empty code blocks that can be safely removed.
  • The new Apex rule AvoidSoslInLoops (category performance) is the companion of the old AvoidSoqlInLoops rule, flagging SOSL (Salesforce Object Search Language) queries when within loops, to avoid governor issues, and hitting the database too often.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule UnnecessaryFinalModifier (category codestyle, former ruleset java-unnecessarycode) has been merged into the rule UnnecessaryModifier. As part of this, the rule has been revamped to detect more cases. It will now flag anonymous class’ methods marked as final (can’t be overridden, so it’s pointless), along with final methods overridden / defined within enum instances. It will also flag final modifiers on try-with-resources.

  • The Java rule UnnecessaryParentheses (category codestyle, former ruleset java-controversial) has been merged into UselessParentheses (category codestyle, former ruleset java-unnecessary). The rule covers all scenarios previously covered by either rule.

  • The Java rule UncommentedEmptyConstructor (category documentation, former ruleset java-design) will now ignore empty constructors annotated with javax.inject.Inject.

  • The Java rule AbstractClassWithoutAnyMethod (category bestpractices, former ruleset java-design) will now ignore classes annotated with com.google.auto.value.AutoValue.

  • The Java rule GodClass (category design', former ruleset java-design`) has been revamped to use the new metrics framework.

  • The Java rule LooseCoupling (category bestpractices, former ruleset java-coupling) has been replaced by the typeresolution-based implementation.

  • The Java rule CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable (category errorprone, former ruleset java-clone) has been replaced by the typeresolution-based implementation and is now able to detect cases if a class implements or extends a Cloneable class/interface.

  • The Java rule UnusedImports (category bestpractices, former ruleset java-imports) has been replaced by the typeresolution-based implementation and is now able to detect unused on-demand imports.

  • The Java rule SignatureDeclareThrowsException (category design, former ruleset ‘java-strictexception’) has been replaced by the typeresolution-based implementation. It has a new property IgnoreJUnitCompletely, which allows all methods in a JUnit testcase to throw exceptions.

  • The Java rule NPathComplexity (category design, former ruleset java-codesize) has been revamped to use the new metrics framework. Its report threshold can be configured via the property reportLevel, which replaces the now deprecated property minimum.

  • The Java rule CyclomaticComplexity (category design, former ruleset java-codesize) has been revamped to use the new metrics framework. Its report threshold can be configured via the properties classReportLevel and methodReportLevel separately. The old property reportLevel, which configured the level for both total class and method complexity, is deprecated.

  • The Java rule CommentRequired (category documentation, former ruleset java-comments) has been revamped to include 2 new properties:
    • accessorCommentRequirement to specify documentation requirements for getters and setters (default to ignored)
    • methodWithOverrideCommentRequirement to specify documentation requirements for methods annotated with @Override (default to ignored)

  • The Java rule EmptyCatchBlock (category errorprone, former ruleset java-empty) has been changed to ignore exceptions named ignore or expected by default. You can still override this behaviour by setting the allowExceptionNameRegex property.

  • The Java rule OptimizableToArrayCall (category performance, former ruleset design) has been modified to fit for the current JVM implementations: It basically detects now the opposite and suggests to use Collection.toArray(new E[0]) with a zero-sized array. See Arrays of Wisdom of the Ancients.

Deprecated Rules

  • The Java rules NcssConstructorCount, NcssMethodCount, and NcssTypeCount (ruleset java-codesize) have been deprecated. They will be replaced by the new rule NcssCount in the category design.

  • The Java rule LooseCoupling in ruleset java-typeresolution is deprecated. Use the rule with the same name from category bestpractices instead.

  • The Java rule CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable in ruleset java-typeresolution is deprecated. Use the rule with the same name from category errorprone instead.

  • The Java rule UnusedImports in ruleset java-typeresolution is deprecated. Use the rule with the same name from category bestpractices instead.

  • The Java rule SignatureDeclareThrowsException in ruleset java-typeresolution is deprecated. Use the rule with the same name from category design instead.

  • The Java rule EmptyStaticInitializer in ruleset java-empty is deprecated. Use the rule EmptyInitializer from the category errorprone, which covers both static and non-static empty initializers.`

  • The Java rules GuardDebugLogging (ruleset java-logging-jakarta-commons) and GuardLogStatementJavaUtil (ruleset java-logging-java) have been deprecated. Use the rule GuardLogStatement from the category bestpractices, which covers all cases regardless of the logging framework.

Removed Rules

  • The deprecated Java rule UseSingleton has been removed from the ruleset java-design. The rule has been renamed long time ago to UseUtilityClass (category design).

Java Symbol Table

A bug in symbol table prevented the symbol table analysis to properly match primitive arrays types. The issue affected the java-unsedcode/UnusedPrivateMethod rule, but other rules may now produce improved results as consequence of this fix.

Apex Parser Update

The Apex parser version was bumped, from 1.0-sfdc-187 to 210-SNAPSHOT. This update let us take full advantage of the latest improvements from Salesforce, but introduces some breaking changes:

  • BlockStatements are now created for all control structures, even if no brace is used. We have therefore added a hasCurlyBrace method to differentiate between both scenarios.
  • New AST node types are available. In particular CastExpression, ConstructorPreamble, IllegalStoreExpression, MethodBlockStatement, Modifier, MultiStatement, NestedExpression, NestedStoreExpression, NewKeyValueObjectExpression and StatementExecuted
  • Some nodes have been removed. Such is the case of TestNode, DottedExpression and NewNameValueObjectExpression (replaced by NewKeyValueObjectExpression)

All existing rules have been updated to reflect these changes. If you have custom rules, be sure to update them.

For more info about the included Apex parser, see the new pmd module “pmd-apex-jorje”, which packages and provides the parser as a binary.

Incremental Analysis

The incremental analysis feature first introduced in PMD 5.6.0 has been enhanced. A few minor issues have been fixed, and several improvements have been performed to make it more accurate.

The cache will now detect changes to the JARs referenced in the auxclasspath instead of simply looking at their paths and order. This means that if you are referencing a JAR you are overwriting in some way, the incremental analysis can now detect it and invalidate it’s cache to avoid false reports.

Similarly, any changes to the execution classpath of PMD will invalidate the cache. This means that if you have custom rules packaged in a jar, any changes to it will invalidate the cache automatically.

We have also improved logging on the analysis code, allowing better insight into how the cache is performing, under debug / verbose builds you can even see individual hits / misses to the cache (and the reason for any miss!)

Finally, as this feature keeps maturing, we are gently pushing this forward. If not using incremental analysis, a warning will now be produced suggesting users to adopt it for better performance.

Rule and Report Properties

The implementation around the properties support for rule properties and report properties has been revamped to be fully typesafe. Along with that change, the support classes have been moved into an own package net.sourceforge.pmd.properties. While there is no change necessary in the ruleset XML files, when using/setting values for rules, there are adjustments necessary when declaring properties in Java-implemented rules.

Rule properties can be declared both for Java based rules and XPath rules. This is now very well documented in Working with properties.

With PMD 6.0.0, multivalued properties are now also possible with XPath rules.

Fixed Issues

  • all
    • #394: [core] PMD exclude rules are failing with IllegalArgumentException with non-default minimumPriority
    • #532: [core] security concerns on URL-based rulesets
    • #538: [core] Provide an XML Schema for XML reports
    • #600: [core] Nullpointer while creating cache File
    • #604: [core] Incremental analysis should detect changes to jars in classpath
    • #608: [core] Add DEBUG log when applying incremental analysis
    • #618: [core] Incremental Analysis doesn’t close file correctly on Windows upon a cache hit
    • #643: [core] PMD Properties (dev-properties) breaks markup on CodeClimateRenderer
    • #680: [core] Isolate classloaders for runtime and auxclasspath
    • #762: [core] Remove method and file property from available property descriptors for XPath rules
    • #763: [core] Turn property descriptor util into an enum and enrich its interface
  • apex
    • #265: [apex] Make Rule suppression work
    • #488: [apex] Use Apex lexer for CPD
    • #489: [apex] Update Apex compiler
    • #500: [apex] Running through CLI shows jorje optimization messages
    • #605: [apex] java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError in the latest build
    • #637: [apex] Avoid SOSL in loops
    • #760: [apex] EmptyStatementBlock complains about missing rather than empty block
    • #766: [apex] Replace old Jorje parser with new one
    • #768: [apex] java.lang.NullPointerException from PMD
  • cpp
    • #448: [cpp] Write custom CharStream to handle continuation characters
  • java
    • #1454: [java] OptimizableToArrayCall is outdated and invalid in current JVMs
    • #1513: [java] Remove deprecated rule UseSingleton
    • #328: [java] java.lang.ClassFormatError: Absent Code attribute in method that is not native or abstract in class file javax/servlet/jsp/PageContext
    • #487: [java] Fix typeresolution for anonymous extending object
    • #496: [java] processing error on generics inherited from enclosing class
    • #510: [java] Typeresolution fails on a simple primary when the source is loaded from a class literal
    • #527: [java] Lombok getter annotation on enum is not recognized correctly
    • #534: [java] NPE in MethodTypeResolution for static methods
    • #603: [core] incremental analysis should invalidate upon Java rule plugin changes
    • #650: [java] ProcesingError analyzing code under 5.8.1
    • #732: [java] LinkageError with aux classpath
  • java-basic
    • #565: [java] False negative on DontCallThreadRun when extending Thread
  • java-comments
    • #396: [java] CommentRequired: add properties to ignore @Override method and getters / setters
    • #536: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifierRule ignores constructors
  • java-controversial
    • #388: [java] controversial.AvoidLiteralsInIfCondition 0.0 false positive
    • #408: [java] DFA not analyzing asserts
    • #537: [java] UnnecessaryParentheses fails to detect obvious scenario
  • java-design
    • #357: [java] UncommentedEmptyConstructor consider annotations on Constructor
    • #438: [java] Relax AbstractClassWithoutAnyMethod when class is annotated by @AutoValue
    • #590: [java] False positive on MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass
  • java-logging * #457: [java] Merge all log guarding rules * #721: [java] NPE in PMD 5.8.1 InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat
  • java-sunsecure
    • #468: [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly false positive
  • java-unusedcode
    • #521: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod returns false positives with primitive data type in map argument
  • java-unnecessarycode
    • #412: [java] java-unnecessarycode/UnnecessaryFinalModifier missing cases
    • #676: [java] java-unnecessarycode/UnnecessaryFinalModifier on try-with-resources

API Changes

  • The class net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.NodeType has been converted to an enum. All node types are enum members now instead of int constants. The names for node types are retained.

  • The Properties API (rule and report properties) has been revamped to be fully typesafe. This is everything around net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.PropertyDescriptor.

    Note: All classes related to properties have been moved into the package net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.

  • The rule classes net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.apex.rule.apexunit.ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAsserts and net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.apex.rule.apexunit.ApexUnitTestShouldNotUseSeeAllDataTrue have been renamed to ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAssertsRule and ApexUnitTestShouldNotUseSeeAllDataTrueRule, respectively. This is to comply with the naming convention, that each rule class should be suffixed with “Rule”.

    This change has no impact on custom rulesets, since the rule names themselves didn’t change.

  • The never implemented method PMD.processFiles(PMDConfiguration, RuleSetFactory, Collection<File>, RuleContext, ProgressMonitor) along with the interface ProgressMonitor has been removed.

  • The method PMD.setupReport(RuleSets, RuleContext, String) is gone. It was used to report dysfunctional rules. But PMD does this now automatically before processing the files, so there is no need for this method anymore.

  • All APIs deprecated in older versions are now removed. This includes:
    • Renderer.getPropertyDefinitions
    • AbstractRenderer.defineProperty(String, String)
    • AbstractRenderer.propertyDefinitions
    • ReportListener
    • Report.addListener(ReportListener)
    • SynchronizedReportListener
    • CPDConfiguration.CPDConfiguration(int, Language, String)
    • CPDConfiguration.getRendererFromString(String)
    • StreamUtil
    • StringUtil.appendXmlEscaped(StringBuilder, String)
    • StringUtil.htmlEncode(String)
  • Several methods in net.sourceforge.pmd.util.CollectionUtil have been deprecated and will be removed in PMD 7.0.0. In particular:
    • CollectionUtil.addWithoutDuplicates(T[], T)
    • CollectionUtil.addWithoutDuplicates(T[], T[])
    • CollectionUtil.areSemanticEquals(T[], T[])
    • CollectionUtil.areEqual(Object, Object)
    • CollectionUtil.arraysAreEqual(Object, Object)
    • CollectionUtil.valuesAreTransitivelyEqual(Object[], Object[])
  • Several methods in net.sourceforge.pmd.util.StringUtil have been deprecated and will be removed in PMD 7.0.0. In particular:
    • StringUtil.startsWithAny(String, String[])
    • StringUtil.isNotEmpty(String)
    • StringUtil.isEmpty(String)
    • StringUtil.isMissing(String)
    • StringUtil.areSemanticEquals(String, String)
    • StringUtil.replaceString(String, String, String)
    • StringUtil.replaceString(String, char, String)
    • StringUtil.substringsOf(String, char)
    • StringUtil.substringsOf(String, String)
    • StringUtil.asStringOn(StringBuffer, Iterator, String)
    • StringUtil.asStringOn(StringBuilder, Object[], String)
    • StringUtil.lpad(String, int)

  • The class net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.typeresolution.typedefinition.JavaTypeDefinition is now abstract, and has been enhanced to provide several new methods.

  • The constructor of net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleSetFactory, which took a ClassLoader is deprecated. Please use the alternative constructor with the net.sourceforge.pmd.util.ResourceLoader instead.

  • The following GUI related classes have been deprecated and will be removed in PMD 7.0.0. The tool “bgastviewer”, that could be started via the script bgastviewer.bat or run.sh bgastviewer is deprecated, too, and will be removed in PMD 7.0.0. Both the “old designer” and “bgastviewer” are replaced by the New Rule Designer.
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.designer.CodeEditorTextPane
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.designer.CreateXMLRulePanel
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.designer.Designer
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.designer.DFAPanel
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.designer.LineGetter
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.Viewer
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.ActionCommands
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.ASTPanel
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.EvaluationResultsPanel
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.MainFrame
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.ParseExceptionHandler
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.SourceCodePanel
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.XPathPanel
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.menu.ASTNodePopupMenu
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.menu.AttributesSubMenu
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.menu.SimpleNodeSubMenu
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.gui.menu.XPathFragmentAddingItem
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.model.ASTModel
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.model.AttributeToolkit
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.model.SimpleNodeTreeNodeAdapter
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.model.ViewerModel
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.model.ViewerModelEvent
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.model.ViewerModelListener
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.util.viewer.util.NLS
  • The following methods in net.sourceforge.pmd.Rule have been deprecated and will be removed in PMD 7.0.0. All methods are replaced by their bean-like counterparts
    • void setUsesDFA(). Use void setDfa(boolean) instead.
    • boolean usesDFA(). Use boolean isDfa() instead.
    • void setUsesTypeResolution(). Use void setTypeResolution(boolean) instead.
    • boolean usesTypeResolution(). Use boolean isTypeResolution() instead.
    • void setUsesMultifile(). Use void setMultifile(boolean) instead.
    • boolean usesMultifile(). Use boolean isMultifile() instead.
    • boolean usesRuleChain(). Use boolean isRuleChain() instead.

External Contributions

01-July-2017 - 5.8.1

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.8.1.

This is a bug fixing release.

Fixed Issues

  • java
    • #471: [java] Error while processing class when EnumMap is used in PMD 5.8.0
    • #477: [core] NoClassDefFoundError under 5.8
    • #478: [core] Processing issues dealing with anonymous classes

API Changes

  • The getGenericArgs() method introduced to TypeNode in 5.8.0 was removed. You can access to generics’ info through the JavaTypeDefinition object.
  • The JavaTypeDefinitionBuilder class introduced in 5.8.0 is not more. You can use factory methods available on JavaTypeDefinition

External Contributions

  • #472: [java] fix error with raw types, bug #471

24-June-2017 - 5.8.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.8.0.

This is a minor release.

New and noteworthy

Java Type Resolution

As part of Google Summer of Code 2017, Bendegúz Nagy has been working on completing type resolution for Java. His progress so far has allowed to properly resolve, in addition to previously supported statements:

  • References to this and super, even when qualified
  • References to fields, even when chained (ie: this.myObject.aField), and properly handling inheritance / shadowing

Lambda parameter types where these are infered rather than explicit are still not supported. Expect future releases to do so.

Metrics Framework

As part of Google Summer of Code 2017, Clément Fournier has been working on a new metrics framework for object-oriented metrics.

The basic groundwork has been done already and with this release, including a first rule based on the metrics framework as a proof-of-concept: The rule CyclomaticComplexity, currently in the temporary ruleset java-metrics, uses the Cyclomatic Complexity metric to find overly complex code. This rule will eventually replace the existing three CyclomaticComplexity rules that are currently defined in the java-codesize ruleset (see also issue #445).

Since this work is still in progress, the metrics API (package net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.oom) is not finalized yet and is expected to change.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule UnnecessaryFinalModifier (ruleset java-unnecessary) now also reports on private methods marked as final. Being private, such methods can’t be overriden, and therefore, the final keyword is redundant.

  • The Java rule PreserveStackTrace (ruleset java-design) has been relaxed to support the builder pattern on thrown exception. This change may introduce some false positives if using the exception in non-orthodox ways for things other than setting the root cause of the exception. Contact us if you find any such scenarios.

  • The ruleset java-junit now properly detects JUnit5, and rules are being adapted to the changes on it’s API. This support is, however, still incomplete. Let us know of any uses we are still missing on the issue tracker

  • The Java rule EmptyTryBlock (ruleset java-empty) now allows empty blocks when using try-with-resources.

  • The Java rule EmptyCatchBlock (ruleset java-empty) now exposes a new property called allowExceptionNameRegex. This allow to setup a regular expression for names of exceptions you wish to ignore for this rule. For instance, setting it to ^(ignored|expected)$ would ignore all empty catch blocks where the catched exception is named either ignored or expected. The default ignores no exceptions, being backwards compatible.

Deprecated Rules

  • The three complexity rules CyclomaticComplexity, StdCyclomaticComplexity, ModifiedCyclomaticComplexity (ruleset java-codesize) have been deprecated. They will be eventually replaced by a new CyclomaticComplexity rule based on the metrics framework. See also issue #445.

Fixed Issues

  • General
    • #380: [core] NPE in RuleSet.hashCode
    • #407: [web] Release date is not properly formatted
    • #429: [core] Error when running PMD from folder with space
  • apex
    • #427: [apex] CPD error when parsing apex code from release 5.5.3
  • cpp
    • #431: [cpp] CPD gives wrong duplication blocks for CPP code
  • java
    • #414: [java] Java 8 parsing problem with annotations for wildcards
    • #415: [java] Parsing Error when having an Annotated Inner class
    • #417: [java] Parsing Problem with Annotation for Array Member Types
  • java-design
    • #397: [java] ConstructorCallsOverridableMethodRule: false positive for method called from lambda expression
    • #410: [java] ImmutableField: False positive with lombok
    • #422: [java] PreserveStackTraceRule: false positive when using builder pattern
  • java-empty
    • #413: [java] EmptyCatchBlock don’t fail when exception is named ignore / expected
    • #432: [java] EmptyTryBlock: false positive for empty try-with-resource
  • java-imports:
    • #348: [java] imports/UnusedImport rule not considering static inner classes of imports
  • java-junit
    • #428: [java] PMD requires public modifier on JUnit 5 test
    • #465: [java] NullPointerException in JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule
  • java-logging:
    • #365: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat does not handle inline incrementation of arguments
  • java-strictexceptions
    • #350: [java] Throwing Exception in method signature is fine if the method is overriding or implementing something
  • java-typeresolution
    • #350: [java] Throwing Exception in method signature is fine if the method is overriding or implementing something
  • java-unnecessary
    • #421: [java] UnnecessaryFinalModifier final in private method
  • jsp
    • #311: [jsp] Parse error on HTML boolean attribute

External Contributions

  • #406: [java] False positive with lambda in java-design/ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod
  • #409: [java] Groundwork for the upcoming metrics framework
  • #416: [java] FIXED: Java 8 parsing problem with annotations for wildcards
  • #418: [java] Type resolution: super and this keywords
  • #423: [java] Add field access type resolution in non-generic cases
  • #425: [java] False positive with builder pattern in java-design/PreserveStackTrace
  • #426: [java] UnnecessaryFinalModifier final in private method
  • #436: [java] Metrics framework tests and various improvements
  • #440: [core] Created ruleset schema 3.0.0 (to use metrics)
  • #443: [java] Optimize typeresolution, by skipping package and import declarations in visit(ASTName)
  • #444: [java] [typeresolution]: add support for generic fields
  • #451: [java] Metrics framework: first metrics + first rule

20-Mai-2017 - 5.7.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.7.0.

This is a minor release.

New and noteworthy

Modified Rules

  • The rule “FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass” of the java-design ruleset has a new property ignoreInterfaceDeclarations. Setting this property to true ignores interface declarations, that precede fields. Example usage:

Renderers

  • Added the ‘empty’ renderer which will write nothing. Does not affect other behaviors, for example the command line PMD exit status will still indicate whether violations were found.

Fixed Issues

  • General
    • #377: [core] Use maven wrapper and upgrade to maven 3.5.0
    • #376: [core] Improve build time on travis
  • java
    • #378: [java] Parser Error for empty statements
  • java-coupling
    • #1427: [java] Law of Demeter violations for the Builder pattern
  • java-design
    • #345: [java] FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass: Add ability to ignore interfaces
    • #389: [java] RuleSetCompatibility - not taking rename of UnusedModifier into account
  • java-junit
    • #358: [java] Mockito verify method is not taken into account in JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert rule
  • java-strings
    • #334: [java] [doc] Add suggestion to use StringUtils#isBlank for InefficientEmptyStringCheck
  • jsp-basic
    • #369: [jsp] Wrong issue “JSP file should use UTF-8 encoding”

API Changes

  • The method net.sourceforge.pmd.util.StringUtil#htmlEncode(String) is deprecated. org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils#escapeHtml4(String) should be used instead.

External Contributions

  • #368: [vf] Adding proper AST support for negation expressions
  • #372: [core] Fix XSS in HTML renderer
  • #374: [java] Add property to ignore interfaces in FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClassRule
  • #381: [core] Fix broken link in the site’s doc
  • #382: [java] Added documentation details on InefficientEmptyStringCheck
  • #383: [jsp] Fixed JspEncoding false positive
  • #390: [java] Remove trailing whitespaces in design.xml
  • #391: [apex] Fix documentation typo
  • #392: [java] False positive for Law Of Demeter (Builder pattern)
  • #395: [java] Mockito verify method is not taken into account in JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert rule

29-April-2017 - 5.6.1

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.6.1.

This is a bug fixing release.

Fixed Issues

  • General
    • #363: [core] Rule documentation pages are missing
    • #364: [core] Stream closed exception when running through maven
    • #373: [core] RuleSetFactory - add more helper methods

22-April-2017 - 5.6.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.6.0.

The most significant changes are on analysis performance, support for Salesforce’s Visualforce language a whole new Apex Security Rule Set and the new Braces Rule Set for Apex.

We have added initial support for incremental analysis. The experimental feature allows PMD to cache analysis results between executions to speed up the analysis for all languages. New CLI flags and Ant options are available to configure it. Currently the feature is disabled by default, but this may change as it matures.

Multithread performance has been enhanced by reducing thread-contention on a bunch of areas. This is still an area of work, as the speedup of running multithreaded analysis is still relatively small (4 threads produce less than a 50% speedup). Future releases will keep improving on this area.

Once again, Symbol Table has been an area of great performance improvements. This time we were able to further improve it’s performance by roughly 10% on all supported languages. In Java in particular, several more improvements were possible, improving Symbol Table performance by a whooping 80%, that’s over 15X faster than PMD 5.5.1, when we first started working on it.

Java developers will also appreciate the revamp of CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable, making it over 500X faster, and PreserveStackTrace which is now 7X faster.

New and noteworthy

Incremental Analysis

PMD now supports incremental analysis. Analysis results can be cached and reused between runs. This allows PMD to skip files without violations that have remained unchanged. In future releases, we plan to extend this behavior to unchanged files with violations too.

The cache is automatically invalidated if:

  • the used PMD version changes
  • the auxclasspath changed and any rules require type resolution
  • the configured rule set has changed

This feature is incubating and is disabled by default. It’s only enabled if you specifically configure a cache file.

To configure the cache file from CLI, a new -cache <path/to/file> flag has been added.

For Ant, a new cacheLocation attribute has been added. For instance:

    <target name="pmd">
        <taskdef name="pmd" classname="net.sourceforge.pmd.ant.PMDTask"/>
        <pmd cacheLocation="build/pmd/pmd.cache">
            <ruleset>rulesets/java/design.xml</ruleset>
            <ruleset>java-basic</ruleset>
            <formatter type="xml" toFile="c:\pmd_report.xml"/>
            <fileset dir="/usr/local/j2sdk1.4.1_01/src/">
                <include name="java/lang/*.java"/>
            </fileset>
        </pmd>
    </target>

Visualforce Support

Salesforce developers rejoice. To out growing Apex support we have added full Visualforce support. Both CPD and PD are available. So far only a security ruleset is available (vf-security).

Visualforce Security Rule Set
VfUnescapeEl

The rule looks for Expression Language occurances printing unescaped values from the backend. These could lead to XSS attacks.

VfCsrf

The rule looks for <apex:page> tags performing an action on page load, definish such action through Expression Language, as doing so is vulnerable to CSRF attacks.

Apex Security Rule Set

A new ruleset focused on security has been added, consisting of a wide range of rules to detect most common security problems.

ApexBadCrypto

The rule makes sure you are using randomly generated IVs and keys for Crypto calls. Hard-wiring these values greatly compromises the security of encrypted data.

For instance, it would report violations on code such as:

public class without sharing Foo {
    Blob hardCodedIV = Blob.valueOf('Hardcoded IV 123');
    Blob hardCodedKey = Blob.valueOf('0000000000000000');
    Blob data = Blob.valueOf('Data to be encrypted');
    Blob encrypted = Crypto.encrypt('AES128', hardCodedKey, hardCodedIV, data);
}
ApexCRUDViolation

The rule validates you are checking for access permissions before a SOQL/SOSL/DML operation. Since Apex runs in system mode not having proper permissions checks results in escalation of privilege and may produce runtime errors. This check forces you to handle such scenarios.

For example, the following code is considered valid:

public class Foo {
    public Contact foo(String status, String ID) {
        Contact c = [SELECT Status__c FROM Contact WHERE Id=:ID];

        // Make sure we can update the database before even trying
        if (!Schema.sObjectType.Contact.fields.Name.isUpdateable()) {
            return null;
        }

        c.Status__c = status;
        update c;
        return c;
    }
}
ApexCSRF

Check to avoid making DML operations in Apex class constructor/init method. This prevents modification of the database just by accessing a page.

For instance, the following code would be invalid:

public class Foo {
    public init() {
        insert data;
    }

    public Foo() {
        insert data;
    }
}
ApexDangerousMethods

Checks against calling dangerous methods.

For the time being, it reports:

  • Against FinancialForce’s Configuration.disableTriggerCRUDSecurity(). Disabling CRUD security opens the door to several attacks and requires manual validation, which is unreliable.
  • Calling System.debug passing sensitive data as parameter, which could lead to exposure of private data.
ApexInsecureEndpoint

Checks against accessing endpoints under plain http. You should always use https for security.

ApexOpenRedirect

Checks against redirects to user-controlled locations. This prevents attackers from redirecting users to phishing sites.

For instance, the following code would be reported:

public class without sharing Foo {
    String unsafeLocation = ApexPage.getCurrentPage().getParameters.get('url_param');
    PageReference page() {
       return new PageReference(unsafeLocation);
    }
}
ApexSharingViolations

Detect classes declared without explicit sharing mode if DML methods are used. This forces the developer to take access restrictions into account before modifying objects.

ApexSOQLInjection

Detects the usage of untrusted / unescaped variables in DML queries.

For instance, it would report on:

public class Foo {
    public void test1(String t1) {
        Database.query('SELECT Id FROM Account' + t1);
    }
}
ApexSuggestUsingNamedCred

Detects hardcoded credentials used in requests to an endpoint.

You should refrain from hardcoding credentials:

  • They are hard to maintain by being mixed in application code
  • Particularly hard to update them when used from different classes
  • Granting a developer access to the codebase means granting knowledge of credentials, keeping a two-level access is not possible.
  • Using different credentials for different environments is troublesome and error-prone.

Instead, you should use Named Credentials and a callout endpoint.

For more information, you can check this

ApexXSSFromEscapeFalse

Reports on calls to addError with disabled escaping. The message passed to addError will be displayed directly to the user in the UI, making it prime ground for XSS attacks if unescaped.

ApexXSSFromURLParam

Makes sure that all values obtained from URL parameters are properly escaped / sanitized to avoid XSS attacks.

Apex Braces Rule Set

The Braces Rule Set has been added and serves the same purpose as the Braces Rule Set from Java: It checks the use and placement of braces around if-statements, for-loops and so on.

IfStmtsMustUseBraces

Avoid using if statements without using braces to surround the code block. If the code formatting or indentation is lost then it becomes difficult to separate the code being controlled from the rest.

For instance, the following code shows the different. PMD would report on the not recommended approach:

if (foo)    // not recommended
    x++;

if (foo) {  // preferred approach
    x++;
}
WhileLoopsMustUseBraces

Avoid using ‘while’ statements without using braces to surround the code block. If the code formatting or indentation is lost then it becomes difficult to separate the code being controlled from the rest.

For instance, the following code shows the different. PMD would report on the not recommended approach:

while (true)    // not recommended
      x++;

while (true) {  // preferred approach
      x++;
}
IfElseStmtsMustUseBraces

Avoid using if..else statements without using surrounding braces. If the code formatting or indentation is lost then it becomes difficult to separate the code being controlled from the rest.

For instance, the following code shows the different. PMD would report on the not recommended approach:

// this is not recommended
if (foo)
       x = x+1;
   else
       x = x-1;

// preferred approach
if (foo) {
   x = x+1;
} else {
   x = x-1;
}
ForLoopsMustUseBraces

Avoid using ‘for’ statements without using surrounding braces. If the code formatting or indentation is lost then it becomes difficult to separate the code being controlled from the rest.

For instance, the following code shows the different. PMD would report on the not recommended approach:

for (int i = 0; i < 42; i++) // not recommended
    foo();

for (int i = 0; i < 42; i++) { // preferred approach
    foo();
}

New Rules

AccessorMethodGeneration (java-design)

When accessing a private field / method from another class, the Java compiler will generate an accessor method with package-private visibility. This adds overhead, and to the dex method count on Android. This situation can be avoided by changing the visibility of the field / method from private to package-private.

For instance, it would report violations on code such as:

public class OuterClass {
    private int counter;
    /* package */ int id;

    public class InnerClass {
        InnerClass() {
            OuterClass.this.counter++; // wrong, accessor method will be generated
        }

        public int getOuterClassId() {
            return OuterClass.this.id; // id is package-private, no accessor method needed
        }
    }
}

This new rule is part of the java-design ruleset.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn (ruleset java-design) now has a new property statementOrderMatters. It is enabled by default to stay backwards compatible. But if this property is set to false, this rule no longer requires the variable declaration and return statement to be on consecutive lines. Any variable that is used solely in a return statement will be reported.

  • The Java rule UseLocaleWithCaseConversions (ruleset java-design) has been modified, to detect calls to toLowerCase and to toUpperCase also within method call chains. This leads to more detected cases and potentially new false positives. See also bugfix #1556.

  • The Java rule AvoidConstantsInterface (ruleset java-design) has been removed. It is completely replaced by the rule ConstantsInInterface.

  • The Java rule UnusedModifier (ruleset java-unusedcode) has been moved to the ruleset java-unnecessary and has been renamed to UnnecessaryModifier. Additionally, it has been expanded to consider more redundant modifiers:
    • Annotations marked as abstract.
    • Nested annotations marked as static.
    • Nested annotations within another interface or annotation marked as public.
    • Classes, interfaces or annotations nested within an annotation marked as public or static.
    • Nested enums marked as static.
  • The Java rule JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert (ruleset java-junit) now accepts usage of @Rule ExpectedException to set expectations on exceptions, and are considered as valid assertions.

CPD Suppression

It is now possible to allow CPD suppression through comments in Java. You tell CPD to ignore the following code with a comment containin CPD-OFF and with CPD-ON you tell CPD to resume analysis. The old approach via @SuppressWarnings annotation is still supported, but is considered deprecated, since it is limited to locations where the SuppressWarnings annotation is allowed. See PR #250.

For example:

    public Object someMethod(int x) throws Exception {
        // some unignored code

        // tell cpd to start ignoring code - CPD-OFF

        // mission critical code, manually loop unroll
        goDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        goDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        goDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        goDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        goDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);
        goDoSomethingAwesome(x + x / 2);

        // resume CPD analysis - CPD-ON

        // further code will *not* be ignored
    }

CPD filelist command line option

CPD now supports the command line option --filelist. With that, you can specify a file, which contains the names and paths of the files, that should be analyzed. This is similar to PMD’s filelist option. You need to use this, if you have a large project with many files, and you hit the command line length limit.

Fixed Issues

  • General
    • #1511: [core] Inconsistent behavior of Rule.start/Rule.end
    • #234: [core] Zip file stream closes spuriously when loading rulesets
    • #256: [core] shortnames option is broken with relative paths
    • #305: [core] PMD not executing under git bash
    • #324: [core] Automated release - github release notes missing
    • #337: [core] Version 5.5.4 seems to hold file lock on rules JAR (affects Windows only)
  • apex-apexunit
    • #1543: [apex] ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAsserts assumes APEX is case sensitive
  • apex-complexity
    • #183: [apex] NCSS Method length is incorrect when using method chaining
    • #251: [apex] NCSS Type length is incorrect when using method chaining
  • apex-security
    • #264: [apex] ApexXSSFromURLParamRule shouldn’t enforce ESAPI usage. String.escapeHtml4 is sufficient.
    • #315: [apex] Documentation flaw on Apex Sharing Violations
  • java
    • #185: [java] CPD runs into NPE when analyzing Lucene
    • #206: [java] Parse error on annotation fields with generics
    • #207: [java] Parse error on method reference with generics
    • #208: [java] Parse error with local class with 2 or more annotations
    • #213: [java] CPD: OutOfMemory when analyzing Lucene
    • #309: [java] Parse error on method reference
    • #1542: [java] CPD throws an NPE when parsing enums with -ignore-identifiers
    • #1545: [java] Symbol Table fails to resolve inner classes
  • java-basic
    • #232: [java] SimplifiedTernary: Incorrect ternary operation can be simplified.
  • java-coupling
    • #270: [java] LoD false positive
  • java-design
    • #933: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn false positive for SuppressWarnings annotation
    • #1448: [java] ImmutableField: Private field in inner class gives false positive with lambdas
    • #1495: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn with assert
    • #1496: [java] New Rule: AccesorMethodGeneration - complements accessor class rule
    • #1512: [java] Combine rules AvoidConstantsInInterface and ConstantsInInterface
    • #1552: [java] MissingBreakInSwitch - False positive for continue
    • #1556: [java] UseLocaleWithCaseConversions does not works with ResultSet (false negative)
    • #177: [java] SingularField with lambdas as final fields
    • #216: [java] [doc] NonThreadSafeSingleton: Be more explicit as to why double checked locking is not recommended
    • #219: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn: ClassCastException in switch case with local variable returned
    • #240: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn: Enhance by checking usages
    • #274: [java] AccessorMethodGeneration: Method inside static inner class incorrectly reported
    • #275: [java] FinalFieldCouldBeStatic: Constant in @interface incorrectly reported as “could be made static”
    • #282: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn false positive when cloning Maps
    • #291: [java] Improve quality of AccessorClassGeneration
    • #310: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn enhancement is overly restrictive – method order matters
    • #352: [java] AccessorClassGeneration throws ClassCastException when seeing array construction
  • java-imports
    • #338: [java] False positive on DontImportJavaLang when importing java.lang.ProcessBuilder
    • #339: [java] False positive on DontImportJavaLang when importing Java 7’s java.lang.invoke.MethodHandles
    • #1546: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedNameRule doesn’t take into consideration conflict resolution
    • #1547: [java] UnusedImportRule - False Positive for only usage in Javadoc - {@link ClassName#CONSTANT}
    • #1555: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName: Really necessary fully qualified name
  • java-junit
    • #285: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule should support @Rule as well as @Test(expected = …)
    • #330: [java] NPE applying rule JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert
  • java-logging-java
    • #1541: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: False positive with placeholder and exception
    • #1551: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: fails with NPE
  • java-optimizations
    • #215: [java] RedundantFieldInitializer report for annotation field not explicitly marked as final
    • #222: [java] UseStringBufferForStringAppends: False Positive with ternary operator
  • java-strings
    • #202: [java] [doc] ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse is not really an optimization
    • #290: [java] InefficientEmptyStringCheck misses String.trim().isEmpty()
  • java-unnecessary
    • #199: [java] UselessParentheses: Parentheses in return statement are incorrectly reported as useless
  • java-unusedcode
    • #246: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check annotations
    • #247: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check annotations inner classes
    • #248: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check static keyword on nested enum declaration
    • #257: [java] UnusedLocalVariable false positive
  • XML
    • #1518: [xml] Error while processing xml file with “.webapp” in the file or directory name
  • psql
    • #1549: [plsql] Parse error for IS [NOT] NULL construct
  • javascript
    • #201: [javascript] template strings are not correctly parsed

API Changes

  • net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleSetFactory is now immutable and its behavior cannot be changed anymore. It provides constructors to create new adjusted instances. This allows to avoid synchronization in RuleSetFactory. See PR #131.
  • net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleSet is now immutable, too, and can only be created via RuleSetFactory. See PR #145.
  • net.sourceforge.pmd.cli.XPathCLI has been removed. It’s functionality is fully covered by the Designer.
  • net.sourceforge.pmd.Report now works with ThreadSafeReportListeners. Both ReportListener and SynchronizedReportListener are deprecated in favor of net.sourceforge.pmd.ThreadSafeReportListener. Therefore, the methods getSynchronizedListeners() and addSynchronizedListeners(...) have been replaced by getListeners() and addListeners(...). See PR #193.

External Contributions

  • #123: [apex] Changing method names to lowercase so casing doesn’t matter
  • #129: [plsql] Added correct parse of IS [NOT] NULL and multiline DML
  • #137: [apex] Adjusted remediation points
  • #146: [apex] Detection of missing Apex CRUD checks for SOQL/DML operations
  • #147: [apex] Adding XSS detection to return statements
  • #148: [apex] Improving detection of SOQL injection
  • #149: [apex] Whitelisting String.isEmpty and casting
  • #152: [java] fixes #1552 continue does not require break
  • #154: [java] Fix #1547: UnusedImports: Adjust regex to support underscores
  • #158: [apex] Reducing FPs in SOQL with VF getter methods
  • #160: [apex] Flagging of dangerous method call
  • #163: [apex] Flagging of System.debug
  • #165: [apex] Improving open redirect rule to avoid test classes/methods
  • #167: [apex] GC and thread safety changes
  • #169: [apex] Improving detection for DML with inline new object
  • #170: [core] Ant Task Formatter encoding issue with XMLRenderer
  • #172: [apex] Bug fix, detects both Apex fields and class members
  • #175: [apex] ApexXSSFromURLParam: Adding missing casting methods
  • #176: [apex] Bug fix for FP: open redirect for strings prefixed with / is safe
  • #179: [apex] Legacy test class declaration support
  • #181: [apex] Control flow based CRUD rule checking
  • #184: [apex] Improving open redirect detection for static fields & assignment operations
  • #189: [apex] Bug fix of SOQL concatenated vars detection
  • #191: [apex] Detection of sharing violation when Database. methods are used
  • #192: [apex] Dead code removal
  • #200: [javascript] Templatestring grammar fix
  • #204: [apex] Sharing violation SOQL detection bug fix
  • #214: [apex] Sharing violation improving reporting of the correct node, de-duping
  • #217: [core] Make it build on Windows
  • #227: [apex] Improving detection of getters
  • #228: [apex] Excluding count from CRUD/FLS checks
  • #229: [apex] Dynamic SOQL is safe against Integer, Boolean, Double
  • #231: [apex] CRUD/FLS rule - add support for fields
  • #266: [java] corrected invalid reporting of LoD violation
  • #268: [apex] Support safe escaping via String method
  • #273: [apex] Shade jackson on apex
  • #279: [vf] New Salesforce VisualForce language support
  • #280: [apex] Support for Aggregate Result in CRUD rules
  • #281: [apex] Add Braces Rule Set
  • #283: [vf] CSRF in VF controller pages
  • #284: [vf] Adding support for parsing EL in script tags
  • #288: [vf] Setting the tab size to 4 for VF
  • #289: [apex] Complex SOQL Crud check bug fixes
  • #296: [apex] Adding String.IsNotBlank to the whitelist to prevent False positives
  • #297: [core] CPD: Adding the –filelist option from pmd to cpd
  • #303: [java] InefficientEmptyStringCheckRule now reports String.trim().isEmpty()
  • #307: [java] Fix false positive with UseStringBufferForStringAppendsRule
  • #308: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule supports @Rule annotated ExpectedExceptions
  • #313: [vf] Apex:iFrame not being detected - bug fix
  • #314: [vf] Bug fixes for incorrect Id detection and escaping
  • #316: [apex] Ignoring certain rules in Batch classes, Queueable, and install scripts
  • #317: [apex] Add support for safe ID assignment from URL param
  • #326: [vf] Quote detection improvement and method argument detection
  • #327: [apex] Fixed SOQL injection detection for escaped vars
  • #331: [java] JunitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule now handles AllocationExpression correctly
  • #332: [java] Future-proof DontImportJavaLangRule
  • #340: [vf] Multiple parser bug fixes
  • #341: [vf] JSON.parse(..) and NOT(..) are safely evaluated
  • #343: [apex] int,id,boolean,ternary operator condition are not injection in Soql
  • #344: [apex] ApexCRUDViolationRule: Bug fix for ClassCastException
  • #351: [vf] Fixing regression introduced by #341

29-April-2017 - 5.5.7

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.5.7.

This is a bug fixing release.

Fixed Issues

  • General
    • #364: [core] Stream closed exception when running through maven

19-April-2017 - 5.5.6

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.5.6.

This is a bug fixing release.

Fixed Issues

  • General
    • #324: [core] Automated release - github release notes missing
    • #337: [core] Version 5.5.4 seems to hold file lock on rules JAR (affects Windows only)

27-March-2017 - 5.5.5

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.5.5.

Fixed Issues

  • general:
    • #305: [core] PMD not executing under git bash
  • java:
    • #309: [java] Parse error on method reference
  • java-design
    • #274: [java] AccessorMethodGeneration: Method inside static inner class incorrectly reported
    • #275: [java] FinalFieldCouldBeStatic: Constant in @interface incorrectly reported as “could be made static”
    • #282: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn false positive when cloning Maps
    • #291: [java] Improve quality of AccessorClassGeneration
  • java-junit:
    • #285: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule should support @Rule as well as @Test(expected = …)
  • java-optimizations:
    • #222: [java] UseStringBufferForStringAppends: False Positive with ternary operator
  • java-strings:
    • #290: [java] InefficientEmptyStringCheck misses String.trim().isEmpty()

External Contributions

  • #280: [apex] Support for Aggregate Result in CRUD rules
  • #289: [apex] Complex SOQL Crud check bug fixes
  • #296: [apex] Adding String.IsNotBlank to the whitelist to prevent False positives
  • #303: [java] InefficientEmptyStringCheckRule now reports String.trim().isEmpty()
  • #307: [java] Fix false positive with UseStringBufferForStringAppendsRule
  • #308: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule supports @Rule annotated ExpectedExceptions

25-Februar-2017 - 5.5.4

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.5.4

New and noteworthy

New Rules

AccessorMethodGeneration (java-design)

When accessing a private field / method from another class, the Java compiler will generate a accessor methods with package-private visibility. This adds overhead, and to the dex method count on Android. This situation can be avoided by changing the visibility of the field / method from private to package-private.

For instance, it would report violations on code such as:

public class OuterClass {
    private int counter;
    /* package */ int id;

    public class InnerClass {
        InnerClass() {
            OuterClass.this.counter++; // wrong, accessor method will be generated
        }

        public int getOuterClassId() {
            return OuterClass.this.id; // id is package-private, no accessor method needed
        }
    }
}

This new rule is part of the java-design ruleset.

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule UnusedModifier (ruleset java-unusedcode) has been expanded to consider more redundant modifiers.
    • Annotations marked as abstract.
    • Nested annotations marked as static.
    • Nested annotations within another interface or annotation marked as public.
    • Classes, interfaces or annotations nested within an annotation marked as public or static.
    • Nested enums marked as static.
  • The Java rule UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn (ruleset java-design) no longer requires the variable declaration and return statement to be on consecutive lines. Any variable that is used solely in a return statement will be reported.

Fixed Issues

  • General
    • #234: [core] Zip file stream closes spuriously when loading rulesets
    • #256: [core] shortnames option is broken with relative paths
  • apex-complexity
    • #251: [apex] NCSS Type length is incorrect when using method chaining
  • apex-security
    • #264: [apex] ApexXSSFromURLParamRule shouldn’t enforce ESAPI usage. String.escapeHtml4 is sufficient.
  • java-basic
    • #232: [java] SimplifiedTernary: Incorrect ternary operation can be simplified.
  • java-coupling
    • #270: [java] LoD false positive
  • java-design
    • #933: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn false positive for SuppressWarnings annotation
    • #1496: [java] New Rule: AccesorMethodGeneration - complements accessor class rule
    • #216: [java] [doc] NonThreadSafeSingleton: Be more explicit as to why double checked locking is not recommended
    • #219: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn: ClassCastException in switch case with local variable returned
    • #240: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn: Enhance by checking usages
  • java-optimizations
    • #215: [java] RedundantFieldInitializer report for annotation field not explicitly marked as final
  • java-unusedcode
    • #246: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check annotations
    • #247: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check annotations inner classes
    • #248: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check static keyword on nested enum declaration
    • #257: [java] UnusedLocalVariable false positive

External Contributions

  • #227: [apex] Improving detection of getters
  • #228: [apex] Excluding count from CRUD/FLS checks
  • #229: [apex] Dynamic SOQL is safe against Integer, Boolean, Double
  • #231: [apex] CRUD/FLS rule - add support for fields
  • #266: [java] corrected invalid reporting of LoD violation
  • #268: [apex] Support safe escaping via String method
  • #273: [apex] Shade jackson on apex

28-January-2017 - 5.5.3

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.5.3

The most significant changes are on analysis performance and a whole new Apex Security Rule Set.

Multithread performance has been enhanced by reducing thread-contention on a bunch of areas. This is still an area of work, as the speedup of running multithreaded analysis is still relatively small (4 threads produce less than a 50% speedup). Future releases will keep improving on this area.

Once again, Symbol Table has been an area of great performance improvements. This time we were able to further improve it’s performance by roughly 10% on all supported languages. In Java in particular, several more improvements were possible, improving Symbol Table performance by a whooping 30%, that’s over 5X faster than PMD 5.5.1, when we first started working on it.

Java developers will also appreciate the revamp of CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable, making it over 500X faster, and PreserveStackTrace which is now 7X faster.

New and noteworthy

Apex Security Rule Set

A new ruleset focused on security has been added, consisting of a wide range of rules to detect most common security problems.

ApexBadCrypto

The rule makes sure you are using randomly generated IVs and keys for Crypto calls. Hard-wiring these values greatly compromises the security of encrypted data.

For instance, it would report violations on code such as:

public class without sharing Foo {
    Blob hardCodedIV = Blob.valueOf('Hardcoded IV 123');
    Blob hardCodedKey = Blob.valueOf('0000000000000000');
    Blob data = Blob.valueOf('Data to be encrypted');
    Blob encrypted = Crypto.encrypt('AES128', hardCodedKey, hardCodedIV, data);
}
ApexCRUDViolation

The rule validates you are checking for access permissions before a SOQL/SOSL/DML operation. Since Apex runs in system mode not having proper permissions checks results in escalation of privilege and may produce runtime errors. This check forces you to handle such scenarios.

For example, the following code is considered valid:

public class Foo {
    public Contact foo(String status, String ID) {
        Contact c = [SELECT Status__c FROM Contact WHERE Id=:ID];

        // Make sure we can update the database before even trying
        if (!Schema.sObjectType.Contact.fields.Name.isUpdateable()) {
            return null;
        }

        c.Status__c = status;
        update c;
        return c;
    }
}
ApexCSRF

Check to avoid making DML operations in Apex class constructor/init method. This prevents modification of the database just by accessing a page.

For instance, the following code would be invalid:

public class Foo {
    public init() {
        insert data;
    }

    public Foo() {
        insert data;
    }
}
ApexDangerousMethods

Checks against calling dangerous methods.

For the time being, it reports:

  • Against FinancialForce’s Configuration.disableTriggerCRUDSecurity(). Disabling CRUD security opens the door to several attacks and requires manual validation, which is unreliable.
  • Calling System.debug passing sensitive data as parameter, which could lead to exposure of private data.
ApexInsecureEndpoint

Checks against accessing endpoints under plain http. You should always use https for security.

ApexOpenRedirect

Checks against redirects to user-controlled locations. This prevents attackers from redirecting users to phishing sites.

For instance, the following code would be reported:

public class without sharing Foo {
    String unsafeLocation = ApexPage.getCurrentPage().getParameters.get('url_param');
    PageReference page() {
       return new PageReference(unsafeLocation);
    }
}
ApexSharingViolations

Detect classes declared without explicit sharing mode if DML methods are used. This forces the developer to take access restrictions into account before modifying objects.

ApexSOQLInjection

Detects the usage of untrusted / unescaped variables in DML queries.

For instance, it would report on:

public class Foo {
    public void test1(String t1) {
        Database.query('SELECT Id FROM Account' + t1);
    }
}
ApexSuggestUsingNamedCred

Detects hardcoded credentials used in requests to an endpoint.

You should refrain from hardcoding credentials:

  • They are hard to mantain by being mixed in application code
  • Particularly hard to update them when used from different classes
  • Granting a developer access to the codebase means granting knowledge of credentials, keeping a two-level access is not possible.
  • Using different credentials for different environments is troublesome and error-prone.

Instead, you should use Named Credentials and a callout endpoint.

For more information, you can check this

ApexXSSFromEscapeFalse

Reports on calls to addError with disabled escaping. The message passed to addError will be displayed directly to the user in the UI, making it prime ground for XSS attacks if unescaped.

ApexXSSFromURLParam

Makes sure that all values obtained from URL parameters are properly escaped / sanitized to avoid XSS attacks.

Modified Rules

The Java rule “UseLocaleWithCaseConversions” (ruleset java-design) has been modified, to detect calls to toLowerCase and to toUpperCase also within method call chains. This leads to more detected cases and potentially new false positives. See also bugfix #1556.

Fixed Issues

  • General
    • #1511: [core] Inconsistent behavior of Rule.start/Rule.end
  • apex-apexunit
    • #1543: [apex] ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAsserts assumes APEX is case sensitive
  • apex-complexity
    • #183: [apex] NCSS Method length is incorrect when using method chaining
  • java
    • #185: [java] CPD runs into NPE when analyzing Lucene
    • #206: [java] Parse error on annotation fields with generics
    • #207: [java] Parse error on method reference with generics
    • #208: [java] Parse error with local class with 2 or more annotations
    • #213: [java] CPD: OutOfMemory when analyzing Lucene
    • #1542: [java] CPD throws an NPE when parsing enums with -ignore-identifiers
    • #1545: [java] Symbol Table fails to resolve inner classes
  • java-design
    • #1448: [java] ImmutableField: Private field in inner class gives false positive with lambdas
    • #1495: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn with assert
    • #1552: [java] MissingBreakInSwitch - False positive for continue
    • #1556: [java] UseLocaleWithCaseConversions does not works with ResultSet (false negative)
    • #177: [java] SingularField with lambdas as final fields
  • java-imports
    • #1546: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedNameRule doesn’t take into consideration conflict resolution
    • #1547: [java] UnusedImportRule - False Positive for only usage in Javadoc - {@link ClassName#CONSTANT}
    • #1555: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName: Really necessary fully qualified name
  • java-logging-java
    • #1541: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: False positive with placeholder and exception
    • #1551: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: fails with NPE
  • java-unnecessary
    • #199: [java] UselessParentheses: Parentheses in return statement are incorrectly reported as useless
  • java-strings
    • #202: [java] [doc] ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse is not really an optimization
  • XML
    • #1518: [xml] Error while processing xml file with “.webapp” in the file or directory name
  • psql
    • #1549: [plsql] Parse error for IS [NOT] NULL construct
  • javascript
    • #201: [javascript] template strings are not correctly parsed

API Changes

  • net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleSetFactory is now immutable and its behavior cannot be changed anymore. It provides constructors to create new adjusted instances. This allows to avoid synchronization in RuleSetFactory. See PR #131.

External Contributions

  • #123: [apex] Changing method names to lowercase so casing doesn’t matter
  • #129: [plsql] Added correct parse of IS [NOT] NULL and multiline DML
  • #137: [apex] Adjusted remediation points
  • #146: [apex] Detection of missing Apex CRUD checks for SOQL/DML operations
  • #147: [apex] Adding XSS detection to return statements
  • #148: [apex] Improving detection of SOQL injection
  • #149: [apex] Whitelisting String.isEmpty and casting
  • #152: [java] fixes #1552 continue does not require break
  • #154: [java] Fix #1547: UnusedImports: Adjust regex to support underscores
  • #158: [apex] Reducing FPs in SOQL with VF getter methods
  • #160: [apex] Flagging of dangerous method call
  • #163: [apex] Flagging of System.debug
  • #165: [apex] Improving open redirect rule to avoid test classes/methods
  • #167: [apex] GC and thread safety changes
  • #169: [apex] Improving detection for DML with inline new object
  • #170: [core] Ant Task Formatter encoding issue with XMLRenderer
  • #172: [apex] Bug fix, detects both Apex fields and class members
  • #175: [apex] ApexXSSFromURLParam: Adding missing casting methods
  • #176: [apex] Bug fix for FP: open redirect for strings prefixed with / is safe
  • #179: [apex] Legacy test class declaration support
  • #181: [apex] Control flow based CRUD rule checking
  • #184: [apex] Improving open redirect detection for static fields & assignment operations
  • #189: [apex] Bug fix of SOQL concatenated vars detection
  • #191: [apex] Detection of sharing violation when Database. methods are used
  • #192: [apex] Dead code removal
  • #200: [javascript] Templatestring grammar fix
  • #204: [apex] Sharing violation SOQL detection bug fix
  • #214: [apex] Sharing violation improving reporting of the correct node, de-duping

05-November-2016 - 5.5.2

Summary:

  • 1 new language for CPD: Groovy
  • 1 new rule: plsql-strictsyntax/MisplacedPragma
  • 12 pull requests
  • 17 bug fixes

New Supported Languages:

  • CPD now supports Groovy. See PR#107.

Feature Requests and Improvements:

  • plsql
    • #1539: [plsql] Create new rule for strict syntax checking: MisplacedPragma

New Rules:

  • New Rules for plsql
    • plsql-strictsyntax: MisplacedPragma

Pull Requests:

  • #106: [java] CPD: Keep constructor names under ignoreIdentifiers
  • #107: [groovy] Initial support for CPD Groovy
  • #110: [java] Fix parser error (issue 1530)
  • #111: [java] Fix BooleanInstantiationRule for Java 8
  • #112: [java] Fix ClassCastException on CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable
  • #113: [java] Fix ClassCastException on SignatureDeclareThrowsException
  • #114: [core] Remove multihreading workaround for JRE5, as no PMD version supports running on JRE5 anymore
  • #115: [java] Simplify lambda parsing
  • #116: [core] [java] Improve collection usage
  • #117: [java] Improve symboltable performance
  • #118: [java] Simplify VariableDeclaratorId parsing
  • #119: [plsql] Fix PMD issue 1531- endless loop followed by OOM while parsing (PL)SQL

Bugfixes:

  • apex-apexunit
    • #1521: [apex] ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAsserts: Parsing error on APEX class: expected one element but was: <BlockStatement, BlockStatement>
  • Java
    • #1530: [java] Parser exception on Java code
    • #1490: [java] PMD Error while processing - NullPointerException
  • java-basic/BooleanInstantiation
    • #1533: [java] BooleanInstantiation: ClassCastException with Annotation
  • java-comments
    • #1522: [java] CommentRequired: false positive
  • java-design/SingularField
    • #1494: [java] SingularField: lombok.Data false positive
  • java-imports/UnusedImports
    • #1529: [java] UnusedImports: The created rule violation has no class name
  • java-logging-java
    • #1500 [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: doesn’t ignore exception param
    • #1509 [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: NPE
  • java-typeresolution/CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable
    • #1532: [java] CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable: Implemented Interface extends Cloneable
    • #1534: [java] CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable: ClassCastException with Annotation (java8)
  • java-typeresolution/SignatureDeclareThrowsException
    • #1535: [java] SignatureDeclareThrowsException: ClassCastException with Annotation
  • PLSQL
    • #1520: [plsql] Missing PL/SQL language constructs in parser: Is Of Type, Using
    • #1527: [plsql] PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION gives processing errors
    • #1531: [plsql] OOM/Endless loop while parsing (PL)SQL
  • General
    • #1506: [core] When runing any RuleTst, start/end methods not called
    • #1517: [java] CPD reports on Java constructors when using ignoreIdentifiers

27-July-2016 - 5.5.1

New Rules:

  • New rules for Salesforce.com Apex:
    • apex-apexunit: ApexUnitTestClassShouldHaveAsserts, ApexUnitTestShouldNotUseSeeAllDataTrue

Pull Requests:

  • #101: [java] Improve multithreading performance: do not lock on classloader
  • #102: [apex] Restrict AvoidLogicInTrigger rule to max. 1 violation per file
  • #103: [java] [apex] Fix for 1501: CyclomaticComplexity rule causes OOM when class reporting is disabled
  • #104: [core] [java] Close opened file handles
  • apex #43: [apex] Basic apex unit test rules

Bugfixes:

  • Apex
    • #1501: [java] [apex] CyclomaticComplexity rule causes OOM when class reporting is disabled
  • Java
    • #1501: [java] [apex] CyclomaticComplexity rule causes OOM when class reporting is disabled
  • General
    • #1499: [core] CPD test break PMD 5.5.1 build on Windows
    • #1508: [core] [java] PMD is leaking file handles

25-June-2016 - 5.5.0

System requirements:

PMD and CPD need at least a java7 runtime environment. For analyzing Salesforce.com Apex source code, you’ll need a java8 runtime environment.

New Supported Languages:

  • Salesforce.com Apex is now supported by PMD and CPD. See PR#86.
  • CPD now supports Perl. See PR#82.
  • CPD now supports Swift. See PR#33.

New and modified Rules:

  • New rules in Java:
    • java-logging-java/InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: Check for invalid message format in slf4j loggers. See PR#73.
    • java-design/ConstantsInInterface: Avoid constants in interfaces. Interfaces should define types, constants are implementation details better placed in classes or enums. See Effective Java, item 19. See PR#93.
  • Modified rules in Java:
    • java-comments/CommentRequired: New property serialVersionUIDCommentRequired which controls the comment requirements for serialVersionUID fields. By default, no comment is required for this field.
    • java-design/UseVargs: public static void main method is ignored now and so are methods, that are annotated with Override. See PR#79.
  • New rules for Salesforce.com Apex:
    • apex-complexity: AvoidDeeplyNestedIfStmts, ExcessiveParameterList, ExcessiveClassLength, NcssMethodCount, NcssTypeCount, NcssConstructorCount, StdCyclomaticComplexity, TooManyFields, ExcessivePublicCount
    • apex-performance: AvoidDmlStatementsInLoops, AvoidSoqlInLoops
    • apex-style: VariableNamingConventions, MethodNamingConventions, ClassNamingConventions, MethodWithSameNameAsEnclosingClass, AvoidLogicInTrigger, AvoidGlobalModifier
  • Javascript
    • New Rule: ecmascript-unnecessary/NoElseReturn: The else block in a if-else-construct is unnecessary if the if block contains a return. Then the content of the else block can be put outside. See #1486.

Improvements and CLI changes:

  • A JSON-renderer for PMD which is compatible with CodeClimate. See PR#83.
  • #1360: [core] [java] Provide backwards compatibility for PMD configuration file
  • CPD: If a complete filename is specified, the language dependent filename filter is not applied. This allows to scan files, that are not using the standard file extension. If a directory is specified, the filename filter is still applied and only those files with the correct file extension of the language are scanned.
  • CPD: If no problems found, an empty report will be output instead of nothing. See also #1481
  • CPD: New command line parameter --ignore-usings: Ignore using directives in C# when comparing text.
  • PMD: New command line parameter: -norulesetcompatibility - this disables the ruleset factory compatibility filter and fails, if e.g. an old rule name is used in the ruleset. See also #1360. This option is also available for the ant task: <noRuleSetCompatibility>true</noRuleSetCompatibility>.
  • PMD: New command line parameter: -filelist- this provides an alternative way to define, which files should be process by PMD. With this option, you can provide the path to a single file containing a comma delimited list of files to analyze. If this is given, then you don’t need to provide -dir. See PR#98.

Pull Requests:

  • #25: [cs] Added option to exclude C# using directives from CPD analysis
  • #27: [cpp] Added support for Raw String Literals (C++11).
  • [#29)(https://github.com/adangel/pmd/pull/29): [jsp] Added support for files with UTF-8 BOM to JSP tokenizer.
  • #30: [core] CPD: Removed file filter for files that are explicitly specified on the CPD command line using the ‘–files’ command line option.
  • #31: [core] CPD: Added file encoding detection to CPD.
  • #32: [objectivec] Extended Objective-C grammar to accept UTF-8 escapes (\uXXXX) in string literals.
  • #33: [swift] Added support for Swift to CPD.
  • #34: multiple code improvements: squid:S1192, squid:S1118, squid:S1066, squid:S1854, squid:S2864
  • #35: [javascript] Javascript tokenizer now ignores comment tokens.
  • #72: [java] [jsp] Added capability in Java and JSP parser for tracking tokens.
  • #73: [java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: Add rule to look for invalid message format in slf4j loggers
  • #74: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifier: Fix rendering CommentDefaultAccessModifier description as code
  • #75: [core] RuleSetFactory Performance Enhancement
  • #76: [java] DoNotCallGarbageCollectionExplicitly: fix formatting typos in an example
  • #77: [java] [plsql] Fix various typos
  • #78: [java] MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass: Add Builder pattern check
  • #79: [java] UseVarargs: do not flag public static void main(String[]), ignore @Override
  • #80: [site] Update mvn-plugin.md
  • #82: [perl] Add Perl support to CPD.
  • #83: [core] CodeClimateRenderer: Adds new Code Climate-compliant JSON renderer
  • #84: [java] EmptyMethodInAbstractClassShouldBeAbstract: Change rule’s description.
  • #85: [java] UseStringBufferForStringAppends: False Positive with Ternary Operator (#1340)
  • #86: [apex] Added language module for Salesforce.com Apex incl. rules ported from Java and new ones.
  • #87: [core] [apex] Customize Code Climate Json “categories” + “remediation_points” as PMD rule properties
  • #88: [core] [apex] Fixed typo in ruleset.xml and problems with the CodeClimate renderer
  • #89: [core] Some code enhancements
  • #90: [core] Refactored two test to stop using the deprecated ant class BuildFileTest
  • #91: [core] [java] [jsp] [plsql] [test] [vm] Small code enhancements, basically reordering variable declarations, constructors and variable modifiers
  • #92: [core] [apex] Improved Code Climate Renderer Output and a Bugfix for Apex StdCyclomaticComplexityRule on triggers
  • #93: [java] ConstantsInInterface: Add ConstantsInInterface rule. Effective Java, 19
  • #94: [core] [apex] Added property, fixed code climate renderer output and deleted unused rulessets
  • #95: [apex] AvoidDmlStatementsInLoops: New apex rule AvoidDmlStatementsInLoops
  • #96: [core] CodeClimateRenderer: Clean up Code Climate renderer
  • #97: [java] BooleanGetMethodName: Don’t report bad method names on @Override
  • #98: [core] PMD: Input filelist parameter
  • #99: [apex] Fixed Trigger name is reported incorrectly
  • #100: [core] CSVRenderer: escape filenames with commas in csvrenderer

Bugfixes:

  • java-basic
    • #1471: [java] DoubleCheckedLocking: False positives
    • #1424: [java] SimplifiedTernary: False positive with ternary operator
  • java-codesize
    • #1457: [java] TooManyMethods: counts inner class methods
  • java-comments
    • #1430: [java] CommentDefaultAccessModifier: triggers on field annotated with @VisibleForTesting
    • #1434: [java] CommentRequired: raises violation on serialVersionUID field
  • java-controversial
    • #1449: [java] AvoidUsingShortType: false positive when casting a variable to short
  • java-design
    • #1452: [java] AccessorClassGenerationRule: ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException with Annotations
    • #1479: [java] CloseResource: false positive on Statement
    • #1438: [java] UseNotifyAllInsteadOfNotify: false positive
    • #1467: [java] UseUtilityClass: can’t correctly check functions with multiple annotations
  • java-finalizers
    • #1440: [java] AvoidCallingFinalize: NPE
  • java-imports
    • #1436: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName: false positive on clashing static imports with enums
    • #1465: [java] UnusedImports: False Positve with javadoc @link
  • java-junit
    • #1373: [java] JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage: is no longer compatible with TestNG
    • #1453: [java] TestClassWithoutTestCases: false positive
  • java-migrating
    • #1446: [java] JUnit4TestShouldUseBeforeAnnotation: False positive when TestNG is used
  • java-naming
    • #1431: [java] SuspiciousEqualsMethodName: false positive
  • java-optimizations
    • #1443: [java] RedundantFieldInitializer: False positive for small floats
    • #1340: [java] UseStringBufferForStringAppends: False Positive with ternary operator
  • java-sunsecure
    • #1476: [java] ArrayIsStoredDirectly: False positive
    • #1475: [java] MethodReturnsInternalArray: False positive
  • java-unnecessary
    • #1464: [java] UnnecessaryFinalModifier: false positive on a @SafeVarargs method
    • #1422: [java] UselessQualifiedThis: False positive with Java 8 Function
  • java-unusedcode
    • #1456: [java] UnusedFormalParameter: should ignore overriding methods
    • #1484: [java] UnusedLocalVariable: false positive - parenthesis
    • #1480: [java] UnusedModifier: false positive on public modifier used with inner interface in enum
    • #1428: [java] UnusedPrivateField: False positive when local variable hides member variable hides member variable
  • General
    • #1425: [core] XMLRenderer: Invalid XML Characters in Output
    • #1429: [java] Parser Error: Cast in return expression
    • #1441: [site] PMD: Update documentation how to compile after modularization
    • #1442: [java] PDMASMClassLoader: Java 9 Jigsaw readiness
    • #1455: [java] Parser: PMD doesn’t handle Java 8 explicit receiver parameters
    • #1458: [xml] Performance degradation scanning large XML files with XPath custom rules
    • #1461: [core] RuleSetFactory: Possible threading issue due to PR#75
    • #1470: [java] Parser: Error with type-bound lambda
    • #1478: [core] PMD CLI: Use first language as default if Java is not available
    • #1481: [core] CPD: no problems found results in blank file instead of empty xml
    • #1485: [apex] Analysis of some apex classes cause a stackoverflow error
    • #1488: [apex] Windows line endings falsify the location of issues
    • #1491: [core] CodeClimateRenderer: corrupt JSON output with real line breaks
    • #1492: [core] PMD CLI: IncompatibleClassChangeError when running PMD

27-March-2017 - 5.4.6

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.4.6.

This is a bug fixing release.

Table Of Contents

Fixed Issues

  • general:
    • #305: [core] PMD not executing under git bash
  • java:
    • #309: [java] Parse error on method reference
  • java-design:
    • #275: [java] FinalFieldCouldBeStatic: Constant in @interface incorrectly reported as “could be made static”
  • java-junit:
    • #285: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule should support @Rule as well as @Test(expected = …)
  • java-optimizations:
    • #222: [java] UseStringBufferForStringAppends: False Positive with ternary operator
  • java-strings:
    • #290: [java] InefficientEmptyStringCheck misses String.trim().isEmpty()

External Contributions

  • #303: [java] InefficientEmptyStringCheckRule now reports String.trim().isEmpty()
  • #307: [java] Fix false positive with UseStringBufferForStringAppendsRule
  • #308: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssertRule supports @Rule annotated ExpectedExceptions

25-Februar-2017 - 5.4.5

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.4.5

This is a bug fixing release.

Table Of Contents

New and noteworthy

Modified Rules

  • The Java rule UnusedModifier (ruleset java-unusedcode) has been expanded to consider more redundant modifiers.
    • Annotations marked as abstract.
    • Nested annotations marked as static.
    • Nested annotations within another interface or annotation marked as public.
    • Classes, interfaces or annotations nested within an annotation marked as public or static.
    • Nested enums marked as static.

Fixed Issues

  • general
    • #234: [core] Zip file stream closes spuriously when loading rulesets
    • #256: [core] shortnames option is broken with relative paths
  • java-basic
    • #232: [java] SimplifiedTernary: Incorrect ternary operation can be simplified.
  • java-coupling
    • #270: [java] LoD false positive
  • java-design
    • #216: [java] [doc] NonThreadSafeSingleton: Be more explicit as to why double checked locking is not recommended
    • #219: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn: ClassCastException in switch case with local variable returned
  • java-optimizations
    • #215: [java] RedundantFieldInitializer report for annotation field not explicitly marked as final
  • java-unusedcode
    • #246: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check annotations
    • #247: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check annotations inner classes
    • #248: [java] UnusedModifier doesn’t check static keyword on nested enum declaration
    • #257: [java] UnusedLocalVariable false positive

External Contributions

  • #266: [java] corrected invalid reporting of LoD violation

28-January-2017 - 5.4.4

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 5.4.4

This is a bug fixing release. The most significant changes are on analysis performance.

Multithread performance has been enhanced by reducing thread-contention on a bunch of areas. This is still an area of work, as the speedup of running multithreaded analysis is still relatively small (4 threads produce less than a 50% speedup). Future releases will keep improving on this area.

Once again, Symbol Table has been an area of great performance improvements. This time we were able to further improve it’s performance by roughly 10% on all supported languages. In Java in particular, several more improvements were possible, improving Symbol Table performance by a whooping 30%, that’s over 5X faster than PMD 5.4.2, when we first started working on it.

Java developers will also appreciate the revamp of CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable, making it over 500X faster, and PreserveStackTrace which is now 7X faster.

New and noteworthy

This is a bug fixing release, no major changes were introduced.

Modified Rules

The Java rule “UseLocaleWithCaseConversions” (ruleset java-design) has been modified, to detect calls to toLowerCase and to toUpperCase also within method call chains. This leads to more detected cases and potentially new false positives. See also bugfix #1556.

Fixed Issues

  • java
    • #206: [java] Parse error on annotation fields with generics
    • #207: [java] Parse error on method reference with generics
    • #208: [java] Parse error with local class with 2 or more annotations
    • #213: [java] CPD: OutOfMemory when analyzing Lucene
  • java-design
    • #1448: [java] ImmutableField: Private field in inner class gives false positive with lambdas
    • #1495: [java] UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn with assert
    • #1552: [java] MissingBreakInSwitch - False positive for continue
    • #1556: [java] UseLocaleWithCaseConversions does not works with ResultSet (false negative)
    • #177: [java] SingularField with lambdas as final fields
  • java-imports
    • #1546: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedNameRule doesn’t take into consideration conflict resolution
    • #1547: [java] UnusedImportRule - False Positive for only usage in Javadoc - {@link ClassName#CONSTANT}
    • #1555: [java] UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName: Really necessary fully qualified name
  • java-unnecessary
    • #199: [java] UselessParentheses: Parentheses in return statement are incorrectly reported as useless
  • java-strings
    • #202: [java] [doc] ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse is not really an optimization
  • XML
    • #1518: [xml] Error while processing xml file with “.webapp” in the file or directory name
  • psql
    • #1549: [plsql] Parse error for IS [NOT] NULL construct
  • javascript
    • #201: [javascript] template strings are not correctly parsed
  • General
    • #1511: [core] Inconsistent behavior of Rule.start/Rule.end

External Contributions

  • #129: [plsql] Added correct parse of IS [NOT] NULL and multiline DML
  • #152: [java] fixes #1552 continue does not require break
  • #154: [java] Fix #1547: UnusedImports: Adjust regex to support underscores
  • #170: [core] Ant Task Formatter encoding issue with XMLRenderer
  • #200: [javascript] Templatestring grammar fix

04-November-2016 - 5.4.3

Summary:

  • 7 pull requests
  • 16 bug fixes

Pull Requests:

  • #35: [javascript] Javascript tokenizer now ignores comment tokens.
  • #103: [java] Fix for 1501: CyclomaticComplexity rule causes OOM when class reporting is disabled
  • #110: [java] Fix parser error (issue 1530)
  • #111: [java] Fix BooleanInstantiationRule for Java 8
  • #112: [java] Fix ClassCastException on CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable
  • #113: [java] Fix ClassCastException on SignatureDeclareThrowsException
  • #119: [plsql] Fix PMD issue 1531- endless loop followed by OOM while parsing (PL)SQL

Bugfixes:

  • Java
    • #1501: [java] CyclomaticComplexity rule causes OOM when class reporting is disabled
    • #1530: [java] Parser exception on Java code
    • #1490: [java] PMD Error while processing - NullPointerException
  • java-basic/BooleanInstantiation
    • #1533: [java] BooleanInstantiation: ClassCastException with Annotation
  • java-comments
    • #1522: [java] CommentRequired: false positive
  • java-design/SingularField
    • #1494: [java] SingularField: lombok.Data false positive
  • java-imports/UnusedImports
    • #1529: [java] UnusedImports: The created rule violation has no class name
  • java-typeresolution/CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable
    • #1532: [java] CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable: Implemented Interface extends Cloneable
    • #1534: [java] CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable: ClassCastException with Annotation (java8)
  • java-typeresolution/SignatureDeclareThrowsException
    • #1535: [java] SignatureDeclareThrowsException: ClassCastException with Annotation
  • PLSQL
    • #1520: [plsql] Missing PL/SQL language constructs in parser: Is Of Type, Using
    • #1527: [plsql] PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION gives processing errors
    • #1531: [plsql] OOM/Endless loop while parsing (PL)SQL
  • General
    • #1499: [core] CPD test break PMD 5.5.1 build on Windows
    • #1506: [core] When runing any RuleTst, start/end methods not called
    • #1508: [core] [java] PMD is leaking file handles

29-May-2016 - 5.4.2

New Supported Languages:

  • CPD supports now Swift (see PR#33).

Feature Request and Improvements:

  • A JSON-renderer for PMD which is compatible with CodeClimate. See PR#83.
  • #1360: Provide backwards compatibility for PMD configuration file

Modified Rules:

  • java-design/UseVargs: public static void main method is ignored now and so are methods, that are annotated with Override. See PR#79.

Pull Requests:

  • #27: Added support for Raw String Literals (C++11).
  • #29: Added support for files with UTF-8 BOM to JSP tokenizer.
  • #30: Removed file filter for files that are explicitly specified on the CPD command line using the ‘–files’ command line option.
  • #31: Added file encoding detection to CPD.
  • #32: Extended Objective-C grammar to accept UTF-8 escapes (\uXXXX) in string literals.
  • #33: Added support for Swift to CPD.
  • #79: do not flag public static void main(String[]) as UseVarargs; ignore @Override for UseVarargs
  • #80: Update mvn-plugin.md
  • #83: Adds new Code Climate-compliant JSON renderer
  • #85: #1340 UseStringBufferForStringAppends False Positive with Ternary Operator

Bugfixes:

  • java-basic/DoubleCheckedLocking:
    • #1471: False positives for DoubleCheckedLocking
  • java-basic/SimplifiedTernary:
    • #1424: False positive with ternary operator
  • java-codesize/TooManyMethods:
    • #1457: TooManyMethods counts inner class methods
  • java-controversial/AvoidUsingShortType:
    • #1449: false positive when casting a variable to short
  • java-design/AccessorClassGeneration:
    • #1452: ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException with Annotations for AccessorClassGenerationRule
  • java-design/CloseResource
    • #1479: CloseResource false positive on Statement
  • java-design/UseUtilityClass:
    • #1467: UseUtilityClass can’t correctly check functions with multiple annotations
  • java-imports/UnusedImports:
    • #1465: False Positve UnusedImports with javadoc @link
  • java-junit/TestClassWithoutTestCases:
    • #1453: Test Class Without Test Cases gives false positive
  • java-optimizations/UseStringBufferForStringAppends:
    • #1340: UseStringBufferForStringAppends False Positive with ternary operator
  • java-sunsecure/ArrayIsStoredDirectly:
    • #1475: False positive of MethodReturnsInternalArray
    • #1476: False positive of ArrayIsStoredDirectly
  • java-unnecessary/UnnecessaryFinalModifier:
    • #1464: UnnecessaryFinalModifier false positive on a @SafeVarargs method
  • java-unusedcode/UnusedFormalParameter:
    • #1456: UnusedFormalParameter should ignore overriding methods
  • java-unusedcode/UnusedLocalVariable
    • #1484: UnusedLocalVariable - false positive - parenthesis
  • java-unusedcode/UnusedModifier
    • #1480: false positive on public modifier used with inner interface in enum
  • General
    • #1455: PMD doesn’t handle Java 8 explicit receiver parameters
    • #1458: Performance degradation scanning large XML files with XPath custom rules
    • #1461: Possible threading issue due to PR#75
    • #1470: Error with type-bound lambda
    • #1481: no problems found results in blank file instead of empty xml

CLI Changes:

  • CPD: If a complete filename is specified, the language dependent filename filter is not applied. This allows to scan files, that are not using the standard file extension. If a directory is specified, the filename filter is still applied and only those files with the correct file extension of the language are scanned.
  • CPD: If no problems found, an empty report will be output instead of nothing. See also #1481
  • New command line parameter for PMD: -norulesetcompatibility - this disables the ruleset factory compatibility filter and fails, if e.g. an old rule name is used in the ruleset. See also #1360. This option is also available for the ant task: <noRuleSetCompatibility>true</noRuleSetCompatibility>.

04-December-2015 - 5.4.1

Feature Request and Improvements:

  • CPD: New command line parameter --ignore-usings: Ignore using directives in C# when comparing text.

Modified Rules:

  • java-comments/CommentRequired: New property serialVersionUIDCommentRequired which controls the comment requirements for serialVersionUID fields. By default, no comment is required for this field.

Pull Requests:

  • #25: Added option to exclude C# using directives from CPD analysis
  • #72: Added capability in Java and JSP parser for tracking tokens.
  • #74: Fix rendering CommentDefaultAccessModifier description as code
  • #75: RuleSetFactory Performance Enhancement

Bugfixes:

  • java-comments/CommentDefaultAccessModifier
    • #1430: CommentDefaultAccessModifier triggers on field annotated with @VisibleForTesting
  • java-comments/CommentRequired
    • #1434: CommentRequired raises violation on serialVersionUID field
  • java-design/UseNotifyAllInsteadOfNotify
    • #1438: UseNotifyAllInsteadOfNotify gives false positive
  • java-finalizers/AvoidCallingFinalize
    • #1440: NPE in AvoidCallingFinalize
  • java-imports/UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName
    • #1436: UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName false positive on clashing static imports with enums
  • java-junit/JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage
    • #1373: JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage is no longer compatible with TestNG
  • java-migrating/JUnit4TestShouldUseBeforeAnnotation
    • #1446: False positive with JUnit4TestShouldUseBeforeAnnotation when TestNG is used
  • java-naming/SuspiciousEqualsMethodName
    • #1431: SuspiciousEqualsMethodName false positive
  • java-optimizations/RedundantFieldInitializer
    • #1443: RedundantFieldInitializer: False positive for small floats
  • java-unnecessary/UselessQualifiedThis
    • #1422: UselessQualifiedThis: False positive with Java 8 Function
  • java-unusedcode/UnusedPrivateField
    • #1428: False positive in UnusedPrivateField when local variable hides member variable
  • General
    • #1425: Invalid XML Characters in Output
    • #1429: Java - Parse Error: Cast in return expression
    • #1441: PMD: Update documentation how to compile after modularization

04-October-2015 - 5.4.0

Note: PMD 5.4.0 requires JDK 1.7 or above.

Summary:

  • 9 new rules
  • 4 features requests
  • 18 pull requests

Feature Request and Improvements:

  • #1344: AbstractNaming should check reverse
  • #1361: ShortVariable and ShortMethodName configuration
  • #1414: Command line parameter to disable “failOnViolation” behavior PMD and CPD Command Line Interfaces have a new optional parameter: failOnViolation. Executing PMD with the option -failOnViolation false will perform the PMD checks but won’t fail the build and still exit with status 0. This is useful if you only want to generate the report with violations but don’t want to fail your build.
  • #1420: UnusedPrivateField: Ignore fields if using lombok

New Rules:

  • Java:

    • Basic: SimplifiedTernary (rulesets/java/basic.xml/SimplifiedTernary)
      Ternary operator with a boolean literal can be simplified with a boolean expression.

    • Clone: CloneMethodMustBePublic (rulesets/java/clone.xml/CloneMethodMustBePublic)
      The java manual says “By convention, classes that implement the Cloneable interface should override Object.clone (which is protected) with a public method.”

    • Clone: CloneMethodReturnTypeMustMatchClassName (rulesets/java/clone.xml/CloneMethodReturnTypeMustMatchClassName)
      If a class implements Cloneable the return type of the method clone() must be the class name.

    • Comments: CommentDefaultAccessModifier (rulesets/java/comments.xml/CommentDefaultAccessModifier)
      In order to avoid mistakes with forgotten access modifiers for methods, this rule ensures, that you explicitly mark the usage of the default access modifier by placing a comment.

    • Design: SingletonClassReturningNewInstance (rulesets/java/design.xml/SingletonClassReturningNewInstance)
      Verifies that the method called getInstance returns a cached instance and not always a fresh, new instance.

    • Design: SingleMethodRule (rulesets/java/design.xml/SingleMethodSingletonRule)
      Verifies that there is only one method called getInstance. If there are more methods that return the singleton, then it can easily happen, that these are not the same instances - and thus no singleton.

    • Unnecessary: UselessQualifiedThis (rulesets/java/unnecessary.xml/UselessQualifiedThis)
      Flags unnecessary qualified usages of this, when this alone would be unique. E.g. use just this instead of Foo.this.

  • Maven POM: (The rules can be found in the pmd-xml module)

    • Basic: ProjectVersionAsDependencyVersion (rulesets/pom/basic.xml/ProjectVersionAsDependencyVersion)
      Checks the usage of ${project.version} in Maven POM files.

    • Basic: InvalidDependencyTypes (rulesets/pom/basic.xml/InvalidDependencyTypes)
      Verifies that only the default types (jar, war, …) for dependencies are used.

Ruleset snippet to activate the new rules:

<rule ref="rulesets/java/basic.xml/SimplifiedTernary"/>
<rule ref="rulesets/java/clone.xml/CloneMethodReturnTypeMustMatchClassName"/>
<rule ref="rulesets/java/clone.xml/CloneMethodMustBePublic"/>
<rule ref="rulesets/java/comments.xml/CommentDefaultAccessModifier"/>
<rule ref="rulesets/java/design.xml/SingleMethodSingleton"/>
<rule ref="rulesets/java/design.xml/SingletonClassReturningNewInstance"/>
<rule ref="rulesets/java/unnecessary.xml/UselessQualifiedThis"/>

<rule ref="rulesets/pom/basic.xml/ProjectVersionAsDependencyVersion"/>
<rule ref="rulesets/pom/basic.xml/InvalidDependencyTypes"/>

Modified Rules:

  • Java

    • Basic: CheckResultSet (rulesets/java/basic.xml/CheckResultSet)
      Do not require to check the result of a navigation method, if it is returned.

    • JUnit: UseAssertTrueInsteadOfAssertEquals (rulesets/java/junit.xml/UseAssertTrueInsteadOfAssertEquals)
      This rule also flags assertEquals, that use Boolean.TRUE/FALSE constants.

    • Naming: AbstractNaming (rulesets/java/naming.xml/AbstractNaming)
      By default, this rule flags now classes, that are named “Abstract” but are not abstract. This behavior can be disabled by setting the new property strict to false.

    • Naming: ShortMethodName (rulesets/java/naming.xml/ShortMethodName)
      Additional property minimum to configure the minimum required length of a method name.

    • Naming: ShortVariable (rulesets/java/naming.xml/ShortVariable)
      Additional property minimum to configure the minimum required length of a variable name.

    • UnusedCode: UnusedPrivateField (rulesets/java/unusedcode.xml/UnusedPrivateField)
      This rule won’t trigger anymore if Lombok is in use. See #1420.

Renamed Rules:

  • Java
    • Design: UseSingleton - UseUtilityClass (rulesets/java/design.xml/UseUtilityClass)
      The rule “UseSingleton” has been renamed to “UseUtilityClass”. See also bugs #1059 and #1339.

Removed Rules:

  • Java

    • Basic: The following rules of ruleset “Basic” were marked as deprecated and are removed with this release now:

      EmptyCatchBlock, EmptyIfStatement, EmptyWhileStmt, EmptyTryBlock, EmptyFinallyBlock, EmptySwitchStatements, EmptySynchronizedBlock, EmptyStatementNotInLoop, EmptyInitializer, EmptyStatementBlock, EmptyStaticInitializer

      UnnecessaryConversionTemporary, UnnecessaryReturn, UnnecessaryFinalModifier, UselessOverridingMethod, UselessOperationOnImmutable, UnusedNullCheckInEquals, UselessParentheses

      These rules are still available in the rulesets “Empty” (rulesets/java/empty.xml) and “Unnecessary” (rulesets/java/unnecessary.xml) respectively.

    • Design: The rule “UncommentedEmptyMethod” has been renamed last release to “UncommentedEmptyMethodBody”. The old rule name reference has been removed with this release now.

    • Controversial: The rule “BooleanInversion” has been deprecated last release and has been removed with this release completely.

Pull Requests:

  • #21: Added PMD Rules for Singleton pattern violations.
  • #23: Extended Objective-C grammar to accept Unicode characters in identifiers
  • #54: Add a new rulesets for Maven’s POM rules
  • #55: Fix run.sh for paths with spaces
  • #56: Adding support for WSDL rules
  • #57: Add default access modifier as comment rule
  • #58: Add rule for unnecessary literal boolean in ternary operators
  • #59: Add check to Boxed booleans in UseAssertTrueInsteadOfAssertEquals rule
  • #60: Add UselessQualifiedThisRule
  • #61: Add CloneMethodReturnTypeMustMatchClassName rule
  • #62: Add CloneMethodMustBePublic rule
  • #63: Change CheckResultSet to allow for the result of the navigation methods to be returned
  • #65: Fix ClassCastException in UselessOverridingMethodRule.
  • #66: #1370 ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse not detected properly on StringBuffer
  • #67: Use Path instead of string to check file exclusions to fix windows-only bug
  • #68: #1370 ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse not detected properly on StringBuffer
  • #69: #1371 InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration not detected properly on StringBuffer
  • #70: Fix code example

Bugfixes:

  • java-unusedcode/UnusedPrivateMethod:
    • #1412: UnusedPrivateMethod false positive: Issue #1403 not completely solved

API Changes:

  • pmd requires now JDK 1.7 or above.

  • pmd-core: net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.symboltable.Scope:

    The method addNameOccurrence returns now a Set of NameDeclarations to which the given occurrence has been added. This is useful in case there are ambiguous declarations of methods.

  • pmd-core: net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.symboltable.AbstractScope:

    The method findVariableHere returns now a Set of NameDeclarations which match the given occurrence. This is useful in case there are ambiguous declarations of methods.

04-November-2016 - 5.3.8

Summary

  • 1 feature requests
  • 6 pull requests
  • 17 bug fixes

Feature Requests and Improvements:

  • #1360: [core] [java] Provide backwards compatibility for PMD configuration file

Pull Requests:

  • #35: [javascript] Javascript tokenizer now ignores comment tokens.
  • #103: [java] Fix for 1501: CyclomaticComplexity rule causes OOM when class reporting is disabled
  • #111: [java] Fix BooleanInstantiationRule for Java 8
  • #112: [java] Fix ClassCastException on CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable
  • #113: [java] Fix ClassCastException on SignatureDeclareThrowsException
  • #119: [plsql] Fix PMD issue 1531- endless loop followed by OOM while parsing (PL)SQL

Bugfixes:

  • java
    • #1501: [java] [apex] CyclomaticComplexity rule causes OOM when class reporting is disabled
  • java-basic/BooleanInstantiation
    • #1533: [java] BooleanInstantiation: ClassCastException with Annotation
  • java-comments
    • #1522: [java] CommentRequired: false positive
  • java-design/CloseResource
    • #1479: [java] CloseResource: false positive on Statement
  • java-imports/UnusedImports
    • #1529: [java] UnusedImports: The created rule violation has no class name
  • java-typeresolution/CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable
    • #1532: [java] CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable: Implemented Interface extends Cloneable
    • #1534: [java] CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable: ClassCastException with Annotation (java8)
  • java-typeresolution/SignatureDeclareThrowsException
    • #1535: [java] SignatureDeclareThrowsException: ClassCastException with Annotation
  • java-unusedcode/UnusedLocalVariable
    • #1484: [java] UnusedLocalVariable: false positive - parenthesis
  • java-unusedcode/UnusedModifier
    • #1480: [java] UnusedModifier: false positive on public modifier used with inner interface in enum
  • plsql
    • #1520: [plsql] Missing PL/SQL language constructs in parser: Is Of Type, Using
    • #1527: [plsql] PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION gives processing errors
    • #1531: [plsql] OOM/Endless loop while parsing (PL)SQL
  • General
    • #1481: [core] CPD: no problems found results in blank file instead of empty xml
    • #1499: [core] CPD test break PMD 5.5.1 build on Windows
    • #1506: [core] When runing any RuleTst, start/end methods not called
    • #1508: [core] [java] PMD is leaking file handles

API Changes:

  • New command line parameter for PMD: -norulesetcompatibility - this disables the ruleset factory compatibility filter and fails, if e.g. an old rule name is used in the ruleset. See also #1360. This option is also available for the ant task: <noRuleSetCompatibility>true</noRuleSetCompatibility>.
  • CPD: If no problems found, an empty report will be output instead of nothing. See also #1481

30-April-2016 - 5.3.7

New Supported Languages:

  • CPD supports now Swift (see PR#33).

Feature Request and Improvements:

  • A JSON-renderer for PMD which is compatible with CodeClimate. See PR#83.

Modified Rules:

  • java-design/UseVargs: public static void main method is ignored now and so are methods, that are annotated with Override. See PR#79.

Pull Requests:

  • #27: Added support for Raw String Literals (C++11).
  • #29: Added support for files with UTF-8 BOM to JSP tokenizer.
  • #30: Removed file filter for files that are explicitly specified on the CPD command line using the ‘–files’ command line option.
  • #31: Added file encoding detection to CPD.
  • #32: Extended Objective-C grammar to accept UTF-8 escapes (\uXXXX) in string literals.
  • #33: Added support for Swift to CPD.
  • #79: do not flag public static void main(String[]) as UseVarargs; ignore @Override for UseVarargs
  • #80: Update mvn-plugin.md
  • #83: Adds new Code Climate-compliant JSON renderer
  • #85: #1340 UseStringBufferForStringAppends False Positive with Ternary Operator

Bugfixes:

  • java-basic/DoubleCheckedLocking:
    • #1471: False positives for DoubleCheckedLocking
  • java-codesize/TooManyMethods:
    • #1457: TooManyMethods counts inner class methods
  • java-controversial/AvoidUsingShortType:
    • #1449: false positive when casting a variable to short
  • java-design/AccessorClassGeneration:
    • #1452: ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException with Annotations for AccessorClassGenerationRule
  • java-design/UseUtilityClass:
    • #1467: UseUtilityClass can’t correctly check functions with multiple annotations
  • java-imports/UnusedImports:
    • #1465: False Positve UnusedImports with javadoc @link
  • java-junit/TestClassWithoutTestCases:
    • #1453: Test Class Without Test Cases gives false positive
  • java-optimizations/UseStringBufferForStringAppends:
    • #1340: UseStringBufferForStringAppends False Positive with ternary operator
  • java-sunsecure/ArrayIsStoredDirectly:
    • #1475: False positive of MethodReturnsInternalArray
    • #1476: False positive of ArrayIsStoredDirectly
  • java-unnecessary/UnnecessaryFinalModifier:
    • #1464: UnnecessaryFinalModifier false positive on a @SafeVarargs method
  • java-unusedcode/UnusedFormalParameter:
    • #1456: UnusedFormalParameter should ignore overriding methods
  • General
    • #1455: PMD doesn’t handle Java 8 explicit receiver parameters
    • #1458: Performance degradation scanning large XML files with XPath custom rules
    • #1461: Possible threading issue due to PR#75
    • #1470: Error with type-bound lambda

CLI Changes:

  • CPD: If a complete filename is specified, the language dependent filename filter is not applied. This allows to scan files, that are not using the standard file extension. If a directory is specified, the filename filter is still applied and only those files with the correct file extension of the language are scanned.

04-December-2015 - 5.3.6

Feature Request and Improvements:

  • CPD: New command line parameter --ignore-usings: Ignore using directives in C# when comparing text.

Modified Rules:

  • java-comments/CommentRequired: New property serialVersionUIDCommentRequired which controls the comment requirements for serialVersionUID fields. By default, no comment is required for this field.

Pull Requests:

  • #25: Added option to exclude C# using directives from CPD analysis
    • Note: This also contains the fix from #23
  • #72: Added capability in Java and JSP parser for tracking tokens.
  • #75: RuleSetFactory Performance Enhancement

Bugfixes:

  • java-comments/CommentRequired
    • #1434: CommentRequired raises violation on serialVersionUID field
  • java-design/UseNotifyAllInsteadOfNotify
    • #1438: UseNotifyAllInsteadOfNotify gives false positive
  • java-finalizers/AvoidCallingFinalize
    • #1440: NPE in AvoidCallingFinalize
  • java-imports/UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName
    • #1436: UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName false positive on clashing static imports with enums
  • java-junit/JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage
    • #1373: JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage is no longer compatible with TestNG
  • java-migrating/JUnit4TestShouldUseBeforeAnnotation
    • #1446: False positive with JUnit4TestShouldUseBeforeAnnotation when TestNG is used
  • java-naming/SuspiciousEqualsMethodName
    • #1431: SuspiciousEqualsMethodName false positive
  • java-optimizations/RedundantFieldInitializer
    • #1443: RedundantFieldInitializer: False positive for small floats
  • java-unusedcode/UnusedPrivateField
    • #1428: False positive in UnusedPrivateField when local variable hides member variable
  • General
    • #1429: Java - Parse Error: Cast in return expression
    • #1425: Invalid XML Characters in Output
    • #1441: PMD: Update documentation how to compile after modularization

04-October-2015 - 5.3.5

Modified Rules:

  • java-design/CloseResource: New Property closeAsDefaultTarget which is true by default to stay backwards compatible. If this property is true, the rule will make sure, that close itself is always considered as a closeTarget - no matter whether it is configured with the closeTargets property or not.

Pull Requests:

  • #71: #1410 Improve description of DefaultPackage rule

Bugfixes:

  • java-controversial/DefaultPackage:
    • #1410: DefaultPackage triggers on field annotated with @VisibleForTesting
  • java-design/CloseResource:
    • #1387: CloseResource has false positive for ResultSet
  • java-optimizations/RedundantFieldInitializer
    • #1418: RedundantFieldInitializer false positive with large long value
  • java-strings/InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration:
    • #1409: NullPointerException in InsufficientStringBufferRule
    • #1413: False positive StringBuffer constructor with ?: int value
  • java-unnecessary/UselessParentheses:
    • #1407: UselessParentheses “&” and “+” operator precedence

18-September-2015 - 5.3.4

Bugfixes:

  • #1370: ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse not detected properly on StringBuffer
  • #1371: InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration not detected properly on StringBuffer
  • #1380: InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration false positive when literal string passed to a lookup service
  • #1384: NullPointerException in ConsecutiveLiteralAppendsRule
  • #1388: ConstructorCallsOverridableMethodRule doesn’t work with params?
  • #1392: SimplifyStartsWith false-negative
  • #1393: PMD hanging during DataflowAnomalyAnalysis
  • #1394: dogfood.xml - Unable to exclude rules [UncommentedEmptyMethod]
  • #1395: UnusedPrivateMethod false positive for array element method call
  • #1396: PrematureDeclaration lambda false positive
  • #1397: StringToString should ignore method references
  • #1398: False positive for GuardLogStatementJavaUtil with Log4j
  • #1399: False positive for VariableNamingConventions with annotation @interface
  • #1400: False positive with JUnit4TestShouldUseBeforeAnnotation
  • #1401: False positive for StringBuilder.append called with constructor
  • #1402: Windows-Only: File exclusions are not case insensitive
  • #1403: False positive UnusedPrivateMethod with JAVA8
  • #1404: Java8 ‘Unnecessary use of fully qualified name’ in Streams Collector
  • #1405: UnusedPrivateMethod false positive?

25-July-2015 - 5.3.3

Pull Requests:

  • #55: Fix run.sh for paths with spaces

Bugfixes:

  • #1364: FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass false positive using multiple annotations
  • #1365: Aggregated javadoc report is missing
  • #1366: UselessParentheses false positive on multiple equality operators
  • #1369: ConsecutiveLiteralAppends not detected properly on StringBuffer
  • #1372: False Negative for CloseResource rule.
  • #1375: CloseResource not detected properly
  • #1376: CompareObjectsWithEquals fails for type annotated method parameter
  • #1379: PMD CLI: Cannot specify multiple properties
  • #1381: CPD Cannot use CSV/VS Renderers because they don’t support encoding property

22-May-2015 - 5.3.2

Bugfixes:

  • #1330: AvoidReassigningParameters does not work with varargs
  • #1335: GuardLogStatementJavaUtil should not apply to SLF4J Logger
  • #1342: UseConcurrentHashMap false positive (with documentation example)
  • #1343: MethodNamingConventions for overrided methods
  • #1345: UseCollectionIsEmpty throws NullPointerException
  • #1353: False positive “Only One Return” with lambda
  • #1354: Complex FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass false positive with Spring annotations
  • #1355: NullPointerException in a java file having a single comment line

20-April-2015 - 5.3.1

New/Modified/Deprecated Rules:

  • Language Java, ruleset design.xml: The rule “UseSingleton” has been renamed to “UseUtilityClass”. See also bugs #1059 and #1339.

Pull Requests:

  • #53: Fix some NullPointerExceptions

Bugfixes:

  • #1332: False Positive: UnusedPrivateMethod
  • #1333: Error while processing Java file with Lambda expressions
  • #1337: False positive “Avoid throwing raw exception types” when exception is not thrown
  • #1338: The pmd-java8 POM bears the wrong parent module version

April 1, 2015 - 5.3.0

New Supported Languages:

  • Matlab (CPD)
  • Objective-C (CPD)
  • Python (CPD)
  • Scala (CPD)

Feature Requests and Improvements:

  • XML: Line numbers for XML documents are more accurate. This is a further improvement of #1054.
  • CPD: New output format ‘csv_with_linecount_per_file’
  • #1320: Enhance SimplifyBooleanReturns checks
  • PMD exits with status 4 if any violations have been found. This behavior has been introduced to ease PMD integration into scripts or hooks, such as SVN hooks.

New/Modified/Deprecated Rules:

The following rules have been enhanced :

  • Language Java, ruleset design.xml: The rule “SimplifyBooleanReturns” now also marks methods where the else case is omitted and just a return. See also feature #1320.

The following rules are marked as deprecated and will be removed with the next release of PMD.

  • Language Java, ruleset basic.xml: The following rules have been moved into the empty.xml ruleset. You’ll need to enable the “empty” ruleset explicitly from now on, if you want to have these rules executed:

    EmptyCatchBlock, EmptyIfStatement, EmptyWhileStmt, EmptyTryBlock, EmptyFinallyBlock, EmptySwitchStatements, EmptySynchronizedBlock, EmptyStatementNotInLoop, EmptyInitializer, EmptyStatementBlock, EmptyStaticInitializer.

  • Language Java, ruleset basic.xml: The following rules have been moved into the unnecessary.xml ruleset. You’ll need to enable the “unnecessary” ruleset explicitly from now on, if you want to have these rules executed:

    UnnecessaryConversionTemporary, UnnecessaryReturn, UnnecessaryFinalModifier, UselessOverridingMethod, UselessOperationOnImmutable, UnusedNullCheckInEquals, UselessParentheses.

  • Language Java, ruleset design.xml: The rule “UncommentedEmptyMethod” has been renamed to “UncommentedEmptyMethodBody”. See also bug #1283.

  • Language Java, ruleset controversial.xml: The rule “BooleanInversion” is deprecated and will be removed with the next release. See #1277 for more details.

Pull Requests:

  • #11: Added support for Python to CPD.
  • #12: Added support for Matlab to CPD.
  • #13: Added support for Objective-C to CPD.
  • #14: Added support for Scala to CPD.
  • #15: (pmd-cs) Fixed incorrect line numbers after mutiline comments and verbatim strings.
  • #16: Fixed several C++ lexical / tokenize errors.
  • #17: Fixed ‘–files’ command line option of CPD, so it also works for files and not only for directories.
  • #18: Created extra CSV output format csv_with_linecount_per_file which outputs the correct line count per file.
  • #19: Fixed exit status of PMD when error occurs
  • #48: Handle NoClassDefFoundError along ClassNotFoundException
  • #49: Fix some false positives in UnusedPrivateField
  • #50: Add missing assertions in JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage test
  • #51: [JUnit] Check assertion message present in assertEquals with delta
  • #52: Improves JDK8 support for default methods and static methods in interfaces

Bugfixes:

  • #914: False +ve from UnusedImports with wildcard static imports
  • #1197: JUnit4TestShouldUseTestAnnotation for private method
  • #1277: Delete BooleanInversion as it makes no sense
  • #1283: Rename UncommentedEmptyMethod to UncommentedEmptyMethodBody
  • #1296: PMD UnusedPrivateMethod invalid detection of ‘private void method(int,boolean,Integer…)’
  • #1298: Member variable int type with value 0xff000000 causes processing error
  • #1299: MethodReturnsInternalArray false positive
  • #1302: False Positive: UnusedPrivateField when accessed by inner class
  • #1303: OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcodeRule does not work on class implements resolvable interfaces
  • #1304: UseCollectionIsEmpty false positive comparing to 1
  • #1305: variable declaration inside switch causes ClassCastException
  • #1306: False positive on duplicate when using static imports
  • #1307: False positive: SingularField and lambda-expression
  • #1308: PMD runs endlessly on some generated files
  • #1312: Rule reference must not override rule name of referenced rule
  • #1313: Missing assertion message in assertEquals with delta not detected
  • #1316: Multi Rule Properties with delimiter not possible
  • #1317: RuntimeException when parsing class with multiple lambdas
  • #1319: PMD stops with NoClassDefFoundError (typeresolution)
  • #1321: CPD format XML fails with NullPointer
  • #1322: MethodReturnsInternalArray on private methods
  • #1323: False positive case of UseAssertTrueInsteadOfAssertEquals
  • #1324: MethodReturnsInternalArray false positive with clone()
  • #1325: Inner class declared within a method fails to parse (ClassCastException)
  • #1326: PMD 5.3.0-SNAPSHOT doesn’t compile under Windows

API Changes:

  • net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.Match.iterator() now returns an iterator of the new type net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.Mark instead of TokenEntry. A Mark contains all the informations about each single duplication, including the TokenEntry via Mark.getToken(). This Mark is useful for reporting the correct line count for each duplication. Previously only one line count was available. As for some languages CPD can be instructed to ignore comments, the line count could be different in the different files for the same duplication.

  • pmd-test: The utility class StreamUtil is deprecated. Just use Apache Commons IO Utils instead.

December 21, 2014 - 5.2.3:

Feature Requests and Improvements:

  • #1288: MethodNamingConventions for native should be deactivated
  • #1293: Disable VariableNamingConventions for native methods

Modified Rules:

Pull requests:

  • #45: #1290 RuleSetReferenceId does not process HTTP(S) correctly.
  • #46: Allow byte[] as no-vargars last argument
  • #47: Allow byte[] data and byte data[] as no-varargs last argument

Bugfixes:

  • #1252: net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.TokenMgrError: Lexical error in file xxx.cpp
  • #1289: CommentRequired not ignored if javadoc {@inheritDoc} anon inner classes
  • #1290: RuleSetReferenceId does not process HTTP(S) correctly.
  • #1294: False positive UnusedPrivateMethod with public inner enum from another class

December 3, 2014 - 5.2.2:

New Parameters for CPD:

For the language cpp, the following new parameters are supported:

  • --no-skip-blocks: Disables skipping of code blocks like a pre-processor. This is by default enabled.
  • --skip-blocks-pattern: Pattern to find the blocks to skip. Start and End pattern separated by “|”. Default value is “#if 0|#endif”.

Bugfixes:

  • #1090: cpp parser exception with inline asm
  • #1128: CompareObjectsWithEquals False Positive comparing boolean (primitive) values
  • #1254: CPD run that worked in 5.1.2 fails in 5.1.3 with OOM
  • #1276: False positive in UnusedPrivateMethod with inner enum
  • #1280: False Positive in UnusedImports when import used in javadoc
  • #1281: UnusedPrivateMethod incorrectly flagged for methods nested private classes
  • #1282: False Positive with implicit String.valuesOf() (Java)
  • #1285: Prevent to modify the System environment
  • #1286: UnusedPrivateMethod returns false positives for varags and enums

November 3, 2014 - 5.2.1:

Bugfixes:

  • #550: False +: MissingBreakInSwitch
  • #1252: net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.TokenMgrError: Lexical error in file xxx.cpp
  • #1253: Document default behaviour when CPD command line arguments “encoding” and “ignoreAnnotations” are not specified
  • #1255: UseUtilityClass false positive with Exceptions
  • #1256: PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons false positive with Characters
  • #1258: Java 8 Lambda parse error on direct field access
  • #1259: CloseResource rule ignores conditionnals within finally blocks
  • #1261: False positive “Avoid unused private methods” with Generics
  • #1262: False positive for MissingBreakInSwitch
  • #1263: PMD reports CheckResultSet violation in completely unrelated source files.
  • #1272: varargs in methods are causing IndexOutOfBoundException when trying to process files
  • #1273: CheckResultSet false positive in try-with-resources nested in if
  • #1274: ant integration broken with pmd-5.2.0
  • #1275: False positive: UnusedModifier rule for static inner class in enum

October 17, 2014 - 5.2.0:

Modularization of the source code:

The source code of pmd was undergoing a major restructuring. Each language is separated out into its own module. This reduces the size of the artifacts significantly, if only one language is needed. It also makes it easier, to add new languages as extensions.

Therefore, the maven coordinates needed to change. In order to just use pmd with java support, you’ll need the following two dependencies:

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
    <artifactId>pmd-core</artifactId>
    <version>5.2.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
    <artifactId>pmd-java</artifactId>
    <version>5.2.0</version>
</dependency>

The binary package still contains all languages and can be used as usual. Have a look at the central repository for available modules.

New Languages

  • CPD supports now Go.

Pull requests:

  • #9: New rule: NoUnsanitizedJSPExpressionRule
  • #44: Add GoLang support to CPD

New/Modified Rules:

  • JSP - Basic ruleset:
    • NoUnsanitizedJSPExpression: Using unsanitized JSP expression can lead to Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks

August 31, 2014 - 5.1.3:

Bugfixes:

  • #1156: False failure with “Avoid unused private methods”
  • #1187: double variable with AvoidDecimalLiteralsInBigDecimalConstructor
  • #1228: UnusedPrivateMethod returns false positives
  • #1230: UseCollectionIsEmpty gets false positives
  • #1231: No Error Message on Missing Rule
  • #1233: UnusedPrivateMethod: False positive : method called on returned object.
  • #1234: Unused private methods still giving false positives in 5.1.3 snapshot
  • #1235: scope dependencies in POM file
  • #1239: StackOverflowError in AbstractTokenizer.parseString running CPD on >1MB JS file
  • #1241: False+ AvoidProtectedMethodInFinalClassNotExtending
  • #1243: Useless Parentheses False Positive
  • #1245: False Positive for Law of Demeter
  • #1246: False positive from MissingBreakInSwitch
  • #1247: Not able to recognize JDK 8 Static Method References
  • #1249: Regression: UnusedPrivateMethod from 5.0.5 to 5.1.2
  • #1250: Method attribute missing for some violations
  • #1251: UnusedPrivateMethod false positives for boxing & unboxing arguments

Feature Requests and Improvements:

  • #1232: Make ShortClassName configurable
  • #1244: FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass and anonymous classes

New/Modified Rules:

  • FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass (ruleset java-design) has a new property called ignoreAnonymousClassDeclarations: Ignore Field Declarations, that are initialized with anonymous class declarations. This property is enabled by default. See feature #1244.
  • ShortClassName (ruleset java-naming) has a new property called minimum: Number of characters that are required as a minimum for a class name. By default, 5 characters are required - if the class name is shorter, a violation will be reported. See feature #1232.

July 20, 2014 - 5.1.2:

Bugfixes:

  • Fixed bug #1181: unused import false positive if used as parameter in javadoc only.
  • Fixed bug #1192: Ecmascript fails to parse this operator “ ^= “
  • Fixed bug #1198: ConfusingTernary does not ignore else if blocks even when property is set
  • Fixed bug #1200: setRuleSets method javadoc mistype commands instead commas
  • Fixed bug #1201: Error “Can’t find resource null” when ruleset contains spaces after comma
  • Fixed bug #1202: StackOverflowError in RuleSetReferenceId
  • Fixed bug #1205: Parse error on lambda with if
  • Fixed bug #1206: SummaryHTMLRenderer always shows suppressed warnings/violations
  • Fixed bug #1208: yahtml’s outputDir property does not work
  • Fixed bug #1209: XPath 2.0 following-sibling incorrectly includes context node
  • Fixed bug #1211: PMD is failing with NPE for rule UseIndexOfChar while analyzing Jdk 8 Lambda expression
  • Fixed bug #1214: UseCollectionIsEmpty misses some usage
  • Fixed bug #1215: AvoidInstantiatingObjectsInLoops matches the right side of a list iteration loop
  • Fixed bug #1216: AtLeastOneConstructor ignores classes with any methods
  • Fixed bug #1218: TooFewBranchesForASwitchStatement misprioritized
  • Fixed bug #1219: PrimarySuffix/@Image does not work in some cases in xpath 2.0
  • Fixed bug #1223: UnusedPrivateMethod: Java 8 method reference causing false positives
  • Fixed bug #1224: GuardDebugLogging broken in 5.1.1 - missing additive statement check in log statement
  • Fixed bug #1226: False Positive: UnusedPrivateMethod overloading with varargs
  • Fixed bug #1227: GuardLogStatementJavaUtil doesn’t catch log(Level.FINE, “msg” + “ msg”) calls

Feature Requests and Improvements:

Pull requests:

  • #41: Update to use asm 5.0.2
  • #42: Add SLF4j Logger type to MoreThanOneLogger rule
  • #43: Standard and modified cyclomatic complexity

New Rules:

  • Java - codesize ruleset:
    • StdCyclomaticComplexity: Like CyclomaticComplexityRule, but not including boolean operators
    • ModifiedCyclomaticComplexity: Like StdCyclomaticComplexity, but switch statement plus all cases count as 1
    • Thanks to Alan Hohn

April 27, 2014 - 5.1.1:

Bugfixes:

  • Fixed bug 1165: SimplifyConditional false positive
  • Fixed bug 1166: PLSQL XPath Rules Fail for XPath 1.0
  • Fixed bug 1167: Error while processing PLSQL file with BOM
  • Fixed bug 1168: Designer errors when trying to copy xml to clipboard
  • Fixed bug 1170: false positive with switch in loop
  • Fixed bug 1171: Specifying minimum priority from command line gives NPE
  • Fixed bug 1173: Java 8 support: method references
  • Fixed bug 1175: false positive for StringBuilder.append called 2 consecutive times
  • Fixed bug 1176: ShortVariable false positive with for-each loops
  • Fixed bug 1177: Incorrect StringBuffer warning when that class is not used
  • Fixed bug 1178: LexicalError while parsing Java code aborts CPD run
  • Fixed bug 1180: False Positive for ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse on different variable names
  • Fixed bug 1185: UnusedModifier throws NPE when parsing enum with a nested static interface
  • Fixed bug 1188: False positive in UnusedPrivateField
  • Fixed bug 1191: Ecmascript fails to parse “void(0)”
  • Document that PMD requires Java 1.6, see discussion.

CPD Changes:

  • Command Line
    • Added option “–skip-lexical-errors” to skip files, which can’t be tokenized due to invalid characters instead of aborting CPD. See also bug 1178.
  • Ant
    • New optional parameter “skipDuplicateFiles”: Ignore multiple copies of files of the same name and length in comparison; defaults to “false”. This was already a command line option, but now also available in in CPD’s ant task.
    • New optional parameter “skipLexicalErros”: Skip files which can’t be tokenized due to invalid characters instead of aborting CPD; defaults to “false”.

February 11, 2014 - 5.1.0:

New/Updated Languages:

  • Java 1.8 support added.
  • PLSQL support added; thanks to Stuart Turton. See also http://pldoc.sourceforge.net/
  • Apache Velocity support added; thanks to Andrey Utis. See also http://velocity.apache.org

New/Updated Rulesets and Rules:

  • EcmaScript
    • Controversial ruleset, featuring AvoidWithStatement
    • UseBaseWithParseInt
  • Java
    • GuardLogStatement
      • replace xpath implementation of GuardDebugLogging by GuardLogStatement (better perf)
    • CommentRequired
      • basic rule to check for existence for formal (javadoc) comments.
    • AvoidProtectedMethodInFinalClassNotExtending
      • rule to avoid protected methods in final classes that don’t extend anything other than Object.
    • ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse
      • rule to encourage to reuse StringBuilder.append returned object for consecutive calls.
    • PositionLiteralsFirstInCaseInsensitiveComparisons
      • rule similar to PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons, but for case insensitive comparisons (equalsIgnoreCase). Thanks to Larry Diamond
    • ConfusingTernary
      • new property “ignoreElseIf” to suppress this rule in case of if-else-if-else usage. See feature 1161: Confusing Ternary should skip else if statements (or have a property to do so)
    • FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass
      • new property “ignoreEnumDeclarations” which is enabled by default. This relaxes the rule, so that enums can be declared before fields and the rule is not triggered.

Bugfixes:

http://sourceforge.net/p/pmd/bugs/milestone/PMD-5.1.0/

  • Fixed bug 881: private final without setter is flagged
  • Fixed bug 1059: Change rule name “Use Singleton” should be “Use Utility class”
  • Fixed bug 1106: PMD 5.0.4 fails with NPE on parsing java enum with inner class instance creation
  • Fixed bug 1045: //NOPMD not working (or not implemented) with ECMAscript
  • Fixed bug 1054: XML Rules ever report a line -1 and not the line/column where the error occurs
  • Fixed bug 1115: commentRequiredRule in pmd 5.1 is not working properly
  • Fixed bug 1120: equalsnull false positive
  • Fixed bug 1121: NullPointerException when invoking XPathCLI
  • Fixed bug 1123: failure in help examples
  • Fixed bug 1124: PMD.run() multithreading issue
  • Fixed bug 1125: Missing Static Method In Non Instantiatable Class
  • Fixed bug 1126: False positive with FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass for static enums
  • Fixed bug 1130: CloseResource doesn’t recognize custom close method
  • Fixed bug 1131: CloseResource should complain if code between declaration of resource and try
  • Fixed bug 1134: UseStringBufferLength: false positives
  • Fixed bug 1135: CheckResultSet ignores results set declared outside of try/catch
  • Fixed bug 1136: ECMAScript: NullPointerException in getLeft() and getRight()
  • Fixed bug 1140: public EcmascriptNode getBody(int index)
  • Fixed bug 1141: ECMAScript: getFinallyBlock() is buggy.
  • Fixed bug 1142: ECMAScript: getCatchClause() is buggy.
  • Fixed bug 1144: CPD encoding argument has no effect
  • Fixed bug 1146: UseArrayListInsteadOfVector false positive when using own Vector class
  • Fixed bug 1147: EmptyMethodInAbstractClassShouldBeAbstract false positives
  • Fixed bug 1150: “EmptyExpression” for valid statements!
  • Fixed bug 1154: Call super onPause when there is no super
  • Fixed bug 1155: maven pmd plugin does not like empty rule sets
  • Fixed bug 1159: false positive UnusedFormalParameter readObject(ObjectInputStream) if not used
  • Fixed bug 1164: Violations are not suppressed with @java.lang.SuppressWarnings(“all”)

CPD Changes:

  • Command Line
    • Added non-recursive option “–non-recursive” to not scan sub-directories
    • Added option “–exclude” to exclude specific files from being scanned (thanks to Delmas for patch #272)
  • CPD is now thread-safe, so that multiple instances of CPD can run concurrently without stepping on each other (eg: multi-module Maven projects.). Thanks to David Golpira.

Miscellaneous:

  • Upgrade to javacc 5.0 (see patch #1109 Patch to build with Javacc 5.0)
  • DBURI as DataSource possible - directly scan plsql code stored within the database

API Changes

  • Deprecated APIs:
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ecmascript.ast.ASTFunctionNode: getBody(int index) deprecated, use getBody() instead
    • net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ecmascript.ast.ASTTryStatement: isCatch() and isFinally() deprecated, use hasCatch() and hasBody() instead
  • Generalize Symbol Table treatement
    • Added net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.symboltable.ScopedNode
    • Added net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.symboltable.Scope
    • Added net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.symboltable.NameDeclaration
    • Added net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.symboltable.NameOccurrence
    • Added net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.symboltable.AbstractScope
    • Added net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.symboltable.AbstractNameDeclaration

August 11, 2013 - 5.0.5:

Fixed bug  991: AvoidSynchronizedAtMethodLevel for static methods
Fixed bug 1084: NPE at UselessStringValueOfRule.java:36
Fixed bug 1091: file extension for fortran seems to be wrong in cpdgui tools
Fixed bug 1092: Wrong Attribute "excludemarker" in Ant Task Documentation
Fixed bug 1095: AvoidFinalLocalVariable false positive
Fixed bug 1099: UseArraysAsList false positives
Fixed bug 1102: False positive: shift operator parenthesis
Fixed bug 1104: IdempotentOperation false positive
Fixed bug 1107: PMD 5.0.4 couldn't parse call of parent outer java class method from inner class
Fixed bug 1069: Eclipse plugin does not accept project-local config
Fixed bug 1111: False positive: Useless parentheses
Fixed bug 1114: CPD - Tokenizer not initialized with requested properties
Fixed bug 1118: ClassCastException in pmd.lang.ecmascript.ast.ASTElementGet

May 1, 2013 - 5.0.4:

Fixed bug  254: False+ : UnusedImport with Javadoc @throws
Fixed bug  794: False positive on PreserveStackTrace with anonymous inner
Fixed bug 1063: False+: ArrayIsStoredDirectly
Fixed bug 1080: net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.CPDTest test failing
Fixed bug 1081: Regression: CPD skipping all files when using relative paths
Fixed bug 1082: CPD performance issue on larger projects
Fixed bug 1085: NullPointerException by at net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.design.GodClassRule.visit(GodClassRule.java:313)
Fixed bug 1086: Unsupported Element and Attribute in Ant Task Example
Fixed bug 1087: PreserveStackTrace (still) ignores initCause()
Fixed bug 1089: When changing priority in a custom ruleset, violations reported twice

April 5, 2013 - 5.0.3:

Fixed bug  938: False positive on LooseCoupling for overriding methods
Fixed bug  940: False positive on UnsynchronizedStaticDateFormatter
Fixed bug  942: CheckResultSet False Positive and Negative
Fixed bug  943: PreserveStackTrace false positive if a StringBuffer exists
Fixed bug  945: PMD generates RuleSets it cannot read.
Fixed bug  958: Intermittent NullPointerException while loading XPath node attributes
Fixed bug  968: Issues with JUnit4 @Test annotation with expected exception (Thanks to Yiannis Paschalidis)
Fixed bug  975: false positive in ClassCastExceptionWithToArray
Fixed bug  976: UselessStringValueOf wrong when appending character arrays
Fixed bug  977: MisplacedNullCheck makes false positives
Fixed bug  984: Cyclomatic complexity should treat constructors like methods
Fixed bug  985: Suppressed methods shouldn't affect avg CyclomaticComplexity
Fixed bug  992: Class java.beans.Statement triggered in CloseResource rule
Fixed bug  997: Rule NonThreadSafeSingleton gives analysis problem
Fixed bug  999: Law of Demeter: False positives and negatives
Fixed bug 1002: False +: FinalFieldCouldBeStatic on inner class
Fixed bug 1005: False + for ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod - overloaded methods
Fixed bug 1027: PMD Ant: java.lang.ClassCastException
Fixed bug 1032: ImmutableField Rule: Private field in inner class gives false positive
Fixed bug 1064: Exception running PrematureDeclaration
Fixed bug 1068: CPD fails on broken symbolic links
Fixed bug 1073: Hard coded violation messages CommentSize
Fixed bug 1074: rule priority doesn't work on group definitions
Fixed bug 1076: Report.treeIterator() does not return all violations
Fixed bug 1077: Missing JavaDocs for Xref-Test Files
Fixed bug 1078: Package statement introduces false positive UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName violation
Merged pull request #14: fix Nullpointer Exception when using -l jsp

February 3, 2013 - 5.0.2:

Fixed bug  878: False positive: UnusedFormalParameter for abstract methods
Fixed bug  913: SignatureDeclareThrowsException is raised twice
Fixed bug  947: CloseResource rule fails if field is marked with annotation
Fixed bug 1004: targetjdk isn't attribute of PMD task
Fixed bug 1007: Parse Exception with annotation
Fixed bug 1011: CloseResource Rule ignores Constructors
Fixed bug 1012: False positive: Useless parentheses.
Fixed bug 1020: Parsing Error
Fixed bug 1026: PMD doesn't handle 'value =' in SuppressWarnings annotation
Fixed bug 1028: False-positive: Compare objects with equals for Enums
Fixed bug 1030: CPD Java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index:
Fixed bug 1037: Facing a showstopper issue in PMD Report Class (report listeners)
Fixed bug 1039: pmd-nicerhtml.xsl is packaged in wrong location
Fixed bug 1043: node.getEndLine() always returns 0 (ECMAscript)
Fixed bug 1044: Unknown option: -excludemarker
Fixed bug 1046: ant task CPDTask doesn't accept ecmascript
Fixed bug 1047: False Positive in 'for' loops for LocalVariableCouldBeFinal in 5.0.1
Fixed bug 1048: CommentContent Rule, String Index out of range Exception
Fixed bug 1049: Errors in "How to write a rule"
Fixed bug 1055: Please add a colon in the ant output after line,column for Oracle JDeveloper IDE usage
Fixed bug 1056: "Error while processing" while running on xml file with DOCTYPE reference
Fixed bug 1060: GodClassRule >>> wrong method

November 28, 2012 - 5.0.1:

Fixed bug  820: False+ AvoidReassigningParameters
Fixed bug 1008: pmd-5.0.0: ImmutableField false positive on self-inc/dec
Fixed bug 1009: pmd-5.0.0: False + UselessParentheses
Fixed bug 1003: newline characters stripped from CPD data in PMD 5.0.0
Fixed bug 1001: InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration fails to parse hex
Fixed bug  522: InefficientStringBuffering bug false +
Fixed bug  953: String.InefficientStringBuffering false +
Fixed bug  981: Unable to parse
Fixed bug 1010: pmd: parsing of generic method call with super fails
Fixed bug  996: pmd-4.2.6: MissingBreakInSwitch fails to report violation
Fixed bug  993: Invalid NPath calculation in return statement. Thanks to Prabhjot Singh for the patch.
Fixed bug 1023: c/c++ \ as a continuation character not supported
Fixed bug 1033: False+ : SingularField
Fixed bug 1025: Regression of Crash in PMDTask due to multithreading (Eclipse and Java 1.5)
Fixed bug 1017: Type resolution very slow for big project. Thanks to Roman for the patch.
Fixed bug 1036: Documentation: default threshold values removed from v5.0
Fixed bug 1035: UseObjectForClearerAPI has misspelled message
Fixed bug 1031: false DontImportJavaLang
Fixed bug 1034: UseConcurrentHashMap flags calls to methods that return Map
Fixed bug 1006: Problem with implementation of getPackageNameImage method
Fixed bug 1014: AvoidLiteralsInIfCondition must NOT consider null
Fixed bug 1013: jnlp link for CPD is wrong

PMD Command Line Changes:
  Improved command line interface (CLI) parsing using JCommander.
  Note: this breaks compatibility, but should be easy to fix.
  With "-d" you specify nowtThe source files / source directory to be scanned.
  With "-f" you select the report format (like text, html, ...)
  With "-R" you select the rulesets to be used.
  Example: pmd -d c:\data\pmd\pmd\test-data\Unused1.java -f xml -R rulesets/java/unusedcode.xml

Improved JSP parser to be less strict with not valid XML documents (like HTML). Thanks to Victor Bucutea.
Fixed bgastviewer not working. Thanks to Victor Bucutea.
Improved CPD: Support in CPD for IgnoreAnnotations and SuppressWarnings("CPD-START"). Thanks to Matthew Short.
Fixed C# support for CPD - thanks to TIOBE Software.

New Ecmascript rules:

    Basic ruleset: AvoidTrailingComma

May, 1, 2012 - 5.0.0:

Fixed bug 3515487: Inconsistent reference to ruleset file in documentation
Fixed bug 3470274: Using Label for lines in XMLRenderer
Fixed bug 3175710: NPE in InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration

CPD:
- Exit with status code 4 when CPD detects code duplication (Patch ID: 3497021)

January 31, 2012 - 5.0-alpha:

This version of PMD breaks API compatibility with prior versions of PMD, as well
as RuleSet XML compatibility. Also the maven coordinates (groupId) have been changed.
The decision to break compatibility, allows PMD
internals and code organization to be improved to better handle additional
languages.  This opportunity was used to remove depreciated APIs, and beat up
any code which has thumbed its nose at the developers over the years. ;)

The following is relatively complete list of the major changes (this may not be
100% accurate, see actual source code when in doubt):

Fixed bug (no number) - Fixed UseStringBufferLengthRule only worked once per class
All StringBuffer-related rules now also catch StringBuilder-related issues in the same way

    API Change - Unification of treatment of languages within PMD core:
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.Language (now an 'enum')
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.LanguageVersion
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.LanguageVersionDiscoverer
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.LanguageVersionHandler
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.xpath.XPathHandler
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.xpath.AbstractASTXPathHandler
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.xpath.Initializer
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.AbstractTokenManager
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.CharStream
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.JavaCharStream
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.SimpleCharStream
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.TokenMgrError
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.stat.StatisticalRule
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.stat.StatisticalRuleHelper
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.AbstractStatisticalJavaRule
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.AbstractRuleViolationFactory
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.RuleViolationFactory
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.JavaRuleViolationFactory
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.jsp.rule.JspRuleViolationFactory
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.AbstractRule to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.AbstractRule
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.AbstractJavaRule to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.AbstractJavaRule
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.AbstractRuleChainVisitor to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.AbstractRuleChainVisitor
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleChainVisitor to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.RuleChainVisitor
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.SourceFileSelector to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.LanguageFilenameFilter
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.rule.XPathRule to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.XPathRule
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.rule.AbstractJspRule to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.jsp.rule.AbstractJspRule
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.CompilationUnit to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.RootNode
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.JavaRuleChainVisitor to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.JavaRuleChainVisitor
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.ast.JspRuleChainVisitor to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.jsp.rule.JspRuleChainVisitor
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.parser.Parser to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.Parser
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.parser.TokenManager to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.TokenManager
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.parser.* into net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.{Language}
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.sourcetypehandlers.SourceTypeHandler to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.LanguageVersionHandler
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.sourcetypehandlers.VisitorStarter to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.VisitorStarter
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.sourcetypehandlers.* into net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.{Language}
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.stat.StatisticalRule to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.StatisticalRuleHelper
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jaxen.TypeOfFunction to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.xpath.TypeOfFunction
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jaxen.MatchesFunction to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.xpath.MatchesFunction
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jaxen.Attribute to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.xpath.Attribute
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jaxen.AttributeAxisIterator to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.xpath.AttributeAxisIterator
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jaxen.DocumentNavigator to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.xpath.DocumentNavigator
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jaxen.NodeIterator to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.xpath.NodeIterator
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.* into net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.ast.*
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.rules.* into net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.* and updated to follow conventions
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.ast.* into net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.jsp.ast.*
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.rules.* into net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.jsp.ast.rule.* and updated to follow conventions
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.cppast.* into net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.cpp.ast.*
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.CommonAbstractRule
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.SourceFileConstants
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.SourceType
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.SourceTypeDiscoverer
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.SourceTypeToRuleLanguageMapper
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.TargetJDK1_3
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.TargetJDK1_4
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.TargetJDK1_5
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.TargetJDK1_6
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.TargetJDK1_7
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.TargetJDKVersion
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.SourceFileOrDirectoryFilter
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.sourcetypehandlers.SourceTypeHandlerBroker
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.JavaCharStream
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.CharStream
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.TokenMgrError
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.ast.JspCharStream
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.ast.TokenMgrError

    API Change - Generalize RuleViolation treatment
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.IRuleViolation to net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleViolation
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleViolation to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.AbstractRuleViolation
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleViolationComparator
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.JavaRuleViolation
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.jsp.rule.JspRuleViolation

    API Change - Generalize DFA treatment
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.IDataFlowNode to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.DataFlowNode
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.DataFlowNode to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.AbstractDataFlowNode
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.Linker to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.Linker
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.LinkerException to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.LinkerException
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.NodeType to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.NodeType
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.StackObject to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.StackObject
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.SequenceChecker to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.SequenceChecker
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.SequenceException to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.SequenceException
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.StartOrEndDataFlowNode to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.StartOrEndDataFlowNode
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.Structure to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.Structure
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.variableaccess.VariableAccess to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.VariableAccess
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.variableaccess.VariableAccessException to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.VariableAccessException
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.pathfinder.* to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.pathfinder.*
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.report.* to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.dfa.report.*
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.DaaRuleViolation to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.dfa.DaaRuleViolation
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.DataFlowFacade to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.dfa.DataFlowFacade
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.StatementAndBraceFinder to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.dfa.StatementAndBraceFinder
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.dfa.variableaccess.VariableAccessVisitor to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.dfa.VariableAccessVisitor
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.dfa.JavaDataFlowNode
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.DataFlowHandler

   API Change - Generalize Symbol Table treatement
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.symboltable.JspSymbolFacade
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.symboltable.JspScopeAndDeclarationFinder
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.symboltable.* to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.symboltable.*

   API Change - Generalize Type Resolution treatment
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.typeresolution.* to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.typeresolution.*

    API Change - Generalize Property Descriptor treatment
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.* to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.properties.*
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.AbstractPMDProperty to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.properties.AbstractProperty
       Changed - net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.PropertyDescriptor to use Generics, and other changes
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.properties.* new types and other API changes

    API Change - Generalize AST treatment
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.Node (interface extracted from old Node/SimpleNode)
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.AbstractNode
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.DummyJavaNode
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.ast.AbstractJspNode
       Added - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.ast.JspNode
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.SimpleJavaNode to net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.AbstractJavaNode
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.SimpleJavaTypeNode to net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.AbstractJavaTypeNode
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.SimpleJavaAccessNode to net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.AbstractJavaAccessNode
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.SimpleJavaAccessTypeNode to net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.AbstractJavaAccessTypeNode
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.Node
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.SimpleNode
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.ast.AccessNodeInterface
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.ast.Node
       Deleted - net.sourceforge.pmd.jsp.ast.SimpleNode

    API Change - General code reorganization/cleanup
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.AbstractDelegateRule to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.AbstractDelegateRule
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.MockRule to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.MockRule
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleReference to net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule.RuleReference
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.ScopedLogHandlersManager to net.sourceforge.pmd.util.log.ScopedLogHandlersManager
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.util.AntLogHandler to net.sourceforge.pmd.util.log.AntLogHandler
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.util.ConsoleLogHandler to net.sourceforge.pmd.util.log.ConsoleLogHandler
       Renamed - net.sourceforge.pmd.util.PmdLogFormatter to net.sourceforge.pmd.util.log.PmdLogFormatter

   API Change - Changes to Rule/RuleSet/RuleSets
      Removed - boolean Rule.include()
      Removed - void Rule.setInclude(boolean)
      Removed - String Rule.getRulePriorityName()
      Removed - String Rule.getExample()
      Removed - Rule.LOWEST_PRIORITY
      Removed - Rule.PRIORITIES
       Removed - Properties Rule.getProperties()
       Removed - Rule.addProperties(Properties)
       Removed - boolean Rule.hasProperty(String)
       Removed - RuleSet.applies(Language,Language)
       Removed - RuleSet.getLanguage()
       Removed - RuleSet.setLanguage(Language)
       Removed - RuleSets.applies(Language,Language)
      Changed - void Rule.setPriority(int) to void Rule.setPriority(RulePriority)
      Changed - int Rule.getPriority() to void RulePriority Rule.getPriority()
       Changed - XXX Rule.getXXXProperty(String) to <T> Rule.getProperty(PropertyDescriptor<T>)
       Changed - XXX Rule.getXXXProperty(PropertyDescriptor) to <T> Rule.getProperty(PropertyDescriptor<T>)
       Changed - Rule.addProperty(String, String) to Rule.setProperty(PropertyDescriptor<T>, T)
       Changed - Rule.setProperty(PropertyDescriptor, Object) to Rule.setProperty(PropertyDescriptor<T>, T)
       Changed - Rule.setProperty(PropertyDescriptor, Object[]) to Rule.setProperty(PropertyDescriptor<T>, T)
       Changed - Rule.propertyValuesByDescriptor() to Rule.getPropertiesByPropertyDescriptor()
       Changed - PropertyDescriptor Rule.propertyDescriptorFor(String) to PropertyDescriptor Rule.getPropertyDescriptor(String)
       Changed - boolean RuleSet.usesDFA() to boolean RuleSet.usesDFA(Language)
       Changed - boolean RuleSet.usesTypeResolution() to boolean RuleSet.usesTypeResolution(Language)
      Added - Rule.setLanguage(Language)
      Added - Language Rule.getLanguage()
      Added - Rule.setMinimumLanguageVersion(LanguageVersion)
      Added - LanguageVersion Rule.getMinimumLanguageVersion()
      Added - Rule.setMaximumLanguageVersion(LanguageVersion)
      Added - LanguageVersion Rule.getMaximumLanguageVersion()
      Added - Rule.setDeprecated(boolean)
      Added - boolean Rule.isDeprecated()
      Added - String Rule.dysfunctionReason();
       Added - Rule.definePropertyDescriptor(PropertyDescriptor)
       Added - List<PropertyDescriptor> Rule.getPropertyDescriptors()
       Added - RuleSet.applies(Rule,LanguageVersion)

   API Change - Changes to PMD class
      Renamed - PMD.EXCLUDE_MARKER to PMD.SUPPRESS_MARKER
      Removed - PMD.processFile(InputStream, RuleSet, RuleContext)
      Removed - PMD.processFile(InputStream, String, RuleSet, RuleContext)
      Removed - PMD.processFile(Reader, RuleSet, RuleContext)
      Removed - PMD.processFile(Reader, RuleSets, RuleContext, LanguageVersion)
      Moved - PMD.getExcludeMarker() to Configuration.getSuppressMarker()
      Moved - PMD.setExcludeMarker(String) to Configuration.getSuppressMarker(String)
      Moved - PMD.getClassLoader() to Configuration.getClassLoader()
      Moved - PMD.setClassLoader(ClassLoader) to Configuration.getClassLoader(ClassLoader)
      Moved - PMD.setDefaultLanguageVersion(LanguageVersion) to Configuration.setDefaultLanguageVersion(LanguageVersion)
      Moved - PMD.setDefaultLanguageVersions(List<LanguageVersion>) to Configuration.setDefaultLanguageVersions(List<LanguageVersion>)
      Moved - PMD.createClasspathClassLoader(String) to Configuration.createClasspathClassLoader(String)

   API Change - Changes to Node interface
      Renamed - Node.findChildrenOfType(Class) as Node.findDescendantsOfType(Class)
      Renamed - Node.getFirstChildOfType(Class) as Node.getFirstDescendantOfType(Class)
      Renamed - Node.containsChildOfType(Class) as Node.hasDescendantOfType(Class)
      Renamed - Node.getAsXml() as Node.getAsDocument()
      Added - Node.findChildrenOfType(Class), non recursive version
      Added - Node.getFirstChildOfType(Class), non recursive version

   API Change - Remove deprecated APIs
      Removed - AccessNode.setXXX() methods, use AccessNode.setXXX(boolean) instead.
      Removed - PMDException.getReason()
      Removed - RuleSetFactory.createRuleSet(String,ClassLoader), use RuleSetFactory.setClassLoader(ClassLoader) and RuleSetFactory.createRuleSets(String) instead.
      Removed - net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.FileFinder use net.sourceforge.pmd.util.FileFinder instead.

   API Change - RuleSetFactory
        Added - RuleSetFactory.setClassLoader(ClassLoader)
        Added - RuleSetFactory.createRuleSets(List<RuleSetReferenceId>)
        Added - RuleSetFactory.createRuleSet(RuleSetReferenceId)
        Added - RuleSetFactory.setClassLoader(ClassLoader)
        Added - RuleSetReferenceId class to handle parsing of RuleSet strings, see RuleSetReferenceId.parse(String)
      Renamed - RuleSetFactory.createSingleRuleSet(String) to RuleSetFactory.createRuleSet(String);
      Removed - RuleSetFactory.createRuleSets(String, ClassLoader), use RuleSetFactory.createRuleSets(String) instead.
      Removed - RuleSetFactory.createSingleRuleSet(String, ClassLoader), use RuleSetFactory.createSingleRuleSet(String) instead.
      Removed - RuleSetFactory.createRuleSet(InputStream, ClassLoader), use RuleSetFactory.createRuleSet(RuleSetReferenceId) instead.
      Removed - ExternalRuleID, use RuleSetReferenceId instead
      Removed - SimpleRuleSetNameMapper, use RuleSetReferenceId instead

   API Change - Changes to Renderer class, and Renderer implementations
        Added - Renderer.getName()
        Added - Renderer.setName(String)
        Added - Renderer.getDescription()
        Added - Renderer.setDescription(String)
        Added - Renderer.getPropertyDefinitions()
        Added - Renderer.isShowSuppressedViolations()
        Added - AbstractAccumulatingRenderer
      Removed - Renderer.render(Report)
      Removed - Renderer.render(Report, Writer)
      Renamed - Renderer.showSuppressedViolations(boolean) to Renderer.setShowSuppressedViolations(boolean)
      Renamed - PapariTextRenderer to TextColorRenderer
      Renamed - OntheFlyRenderer to AbstractIncrementingRenderer

PMD command line changes:

   Removed -lineprefix use -property linePrefix {value} instead
   Removed -linkprefix use -property linkPrefix {value} instead
   Removed -xslt use -property xsltFilename {value} instead
   Removed -nojsp now obsolete
   Removed -targetjdk use -version {name} {version} instead
   Added -version {name} {version} to set language version to use for a given language
   Added -property {name} {value} as generic way to pass properties to Renderers
   Added -showsuppressed as a means to show suppressed rule violations (consistent with Ant task behavior)
   Renamed 'nicehtml' report to 'xslt'
   Renamed 'papari' report to 'textcolor'
   Renamed -excludemarker option to -suppressmarker
   Renamed -cpus option to -threads

Ant changes:

   Removed - <formatter> 'linkPrefix' attribute, use <param name="linkPrefix"> instead
   Removed - <formatter> 'linePrefix' attribute, use <param name="linePrefix"> instead
   Changed - <formatter> is optional - if not specified, falls back to "text" and console output.
   Removed - <pmd> 'targetJDK' attribute to <version>lang version</version> instead
     Added - <param name="name" value="value"/> as generic way to pass properties to Renderers on <formatter>
   Renamed - <pmd> 'excludeMarker' attribute to 'suppressMarker'
   Renamed - <pmd> 'cpus' attribute to 'threads'

Maven changes:
   The new maven coordinates are: net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd, e.g.
   <dependency>
     <groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
     <artifactId>pmd</artifactId>
     <version>5.0</version>
   </dependency>

New features:

New Language 'ecmascript' added, for writing XPathRule and Java Rules against ECMAScript/JavaScript documents (must be standalone, not embedded in HTML).  Many thanks to Rhino!
New Language 'xml' added, for writing XPathRules against XML documents
New Language 'xsl' added, as a derivative from XML.
Rules can now define a 'violationSuppressRegex' property to universally suppress violations with messages matching the given regular expression
Rules can now define a 'violationSuppressXPath' property to universally suppress violations on nodes which match the given relative XPath expression
Rules are now directly associated with a corresponding Language, and a can also be associated with a specific Language Version range if desired.
Rules can now be flagged with deprecated='true' in the RuleSet XML to allow the PMD Project to indicate a Rule (1) is scheduled for removal, (2) has been removed, or (3) has been renamed/moved.
XPathRules can now query using XPath 2.0 with 'version=2.0"', or XPath 2.0 in XPath 1.0 compatibility mode using 'version="1.0 compatibility"'.  Many thanks to Saxon!
Rules can now use property values in messages, for example ${propertyName} will expand to the value of the 'propertyName' property on the Rule.
Rules can now use violation specific values in messages, specifically ${variableName}, ${methodName}, ${className}, ${packageName}.
New XPath function 'getCommentOn' can be used to search for strings in comments - Thanks to Andy Throgmorton

CPD:
Add .hxx and .hpp as valid file extension for CPD - Thanks to Ryan Pavlik
Add options to to the CPD command line task - Thanks to Cd-Man
Add C# support for CPD - thanks to Florian Bauer
Fix small bug in Rule Designer UI
Performance enhacement when parsing Javadoc (Patch ID: 3217201), thanks to Cd-Man
Rework the XMLRenderer to use proper XML API and strictly uses the system value for encoding (Fix bug: 1435751)

Other changes:
Rule property API upgrades:
  All numeric property descriptors can specify upper & lower limits
  Newly functional Method & Type descriptors allow rule developers to incorporate/watch for individual methods or types
  Better initialization error detection
  Deprecated old string-keyed property API, will leave some methods behind for XPath rules however
'41' and '42' shortcuts for rulesets added
The default Java version processed by PMD is now uniformly Java 1.5.
RuleViolations in Reports now uses List internally, and RuleViolationComparator is no longer broken
TokenManager errors now include a file name whenever possible for every AST in PMD
Added file encoding option to CPD GUI, which already existed for the command line and Ant
AssignmentInOperand enhanced to catch assignment in 'for' condition, as well as use of increment/decrement operators.  Customization properties added to allow assignment in if/while/for, or use of increment/decrement.
Fix false positive on CastExpressions for UselessParentheses
Fix false positive where StringBuffer.setLength(0) was using default constructor size of 16, instead of actual constructor size.
Fix false negative for non-primitive types for VariableNamingConventions, also expanded scope to local and method/constructors, and enhanced customization options to choose between members/locals/parameters (all checked by default)
Fix false negative for UseArraysAsList when the array was passed as method parameter - thanks to Andy Throgmorton
Improve TooManyMethods rule - thanks to a patch from Riku Nykanen
Improve DoNotCallSystemExit - thanks to a patch from Steven Christou
Correct -benchmark reporting of Rule visits via the RuleChain
Creating an Empty Code Ruleset and moved the following rules from Basic ruleset:
        * Empty Code Rules
        * EmptyCatchBlock
        * EmptyIfStmt
        * EmptyWhileStmt
        * EmptyTryBlock
        * EmptyFinallyBlock
        * EmptySwitchStatements
        * EmptySynchronizedBlock
        * EmptyStatementNotInLoop
        * EmptyInitializer
        * EmptyStatementBlock
        * EmptyStaticInitializer
    Basic rulesets still includes a reference to those rules.
Creating a unnecessary Code Ruleset and moved the following rules from Basic ruleset:
        * UnnecessaryConversionTemporary
        * UnnecessaryReturn
        * UnnecessaryFinalModifier
        * UselessOverridingMethod
        * UselessOperationOnImmutable
        * UnusedNullCheckInEquals
        * UselessParentheses
    Basic rulesets still includes a reference to those rules.

Fixed bug 2920057 - Fixed False + on CloseResource
Fixed bug 1808110 - Fixed performance issues on PreserveStackTrace
Fixed bug 2832322 - cpd.xml file tag path attribute should be entity-encoded
Fixed bug 2826119 - False +: DoubleCheckedLocking warning with volatile field
Fixed bug 2835074 - False -: DoubleCheckedLocking with reversed null check
Fixed bug 1932242 - EmptyMethodInAbstractClassShouldBeAbstract false +
Fixed bug 1928009 - Error using migration ruleset in PMD 4.2
Fixed bug 1808110 - PreserveStackTrace
Fixed bug 1988829 - Violation reported without source file name (actually a fix to ConsecutiveLiteralAppends)
Fixed bug 1989814 - false +: ConsecutiveLiteralAppends
Fixed bug 1977230 - false positive: UselessOverridingMethod
Fixed bug 1998185 - BeanMembersShouldSerialize vs @SuppressWarnings("serial")
Fixed bug 2002722 - false + in UseStringBufferForStringAppends
Fixed bug 2056318 - False positive for AvoidInstantiatingObjectsInLoops
Fixed bug 1977438 - False positive for UselessStringValueOf
Fixed bug 2050064 - False + SuspiciousOctalEscape with backslash literal
Fixed bug 1556594 - Wonky detection of NullAssignment
Fixed bug 1481051 - false + UnusedNullCheckInEquals (and other false positives too)
Fixed bug 1943204 - Ant task: <ruleset> path should be relative to Ant basedir
Fixed patch 2075906 - Add toString() to the rule UnnecessaryWrapperObjectCreation
Fixed bug 2315623 - @SuppressWarnings("PMD.UseSingleton") has no effect
Fixed bug 2230809 - False +: ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal
Fixed bug 2338341 - ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException in CPD (on Ruby)
Fixed bug 2315599 - False +: UseSingleton with class containing constructor
Fixed bug 1955852 - false positives for UnusedPrivateMethod & UnusedLocalVariable
Fixed bug 2404700 - UseSingleton should not act on enums
Fixed bug - JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert now detects Junit 4 Assert.assert...  constructs
Fixed bug 1609038 - Xslt report generators break if path contains "java"
Fixed bug 2142986 - UselessOverridingMethod doesn't consider annotations
Fixed bug 2027626 - False + : AvoidFinalLocalVariable
Fixed bug 2606609 - False "UnusedImports" positive in package-info.java
Fixed bug 2645268 - ClassCastException in UselessOperationOnImmutable.getDeclaration
Fixed bug 2724653 - AvoidThreadGroup reports false positives
Fixed bug 2904832 - Type resolution not working for ASTType when using an inner class
Fixed bug 1435751 - XML format does not support UTF-8
Fixed bug 3303811 - Deadlink on "Similar projects" page
Fixed bug 3017616 - Updated documentation regarding Netbeans plugin - thanks to Jesse Glick
Fixed bug 3427563 - Deprecated class (android.util.config) - thanks to Lukas Reschke for the patch

ruleset.dtd and ruleset_xml_schema.xsd added to jar file in rulesets directory
bin and java14/bin scripts:
    retroweaver version was not correct in java14/bin scripts
    support for extra languages in cpd.sh
    standard unix scripts can be used with cygwin
Upgrading UselessOperationOnImmutable to detect more use cases, especially on String and fix false positives
AvoidDuplicateLiteralRule now has 'skipAnnotations' boolean property
Fixed false positive in UnusedImports: javadoc comments are parsed to check @see and other tags
Fixed parsing bug: constant fields in annotation classes
Bug fix: NPE in MoreThanOneLogger
UnnecessaryParentheses now checks all expressions, not just return statements
UnusedFormalParameter now reports violations on the parameter node, not the method/constructor node
Updates to RuleChain to honor RuleSet exclude-pattern
Optimizations and false positive fixes in PreserveStackTrace
@SuppressWarnings("all") disables all warnings
SingularField now checks for multiple fields in the same declaration
Java grammar enhanced to include AnnotationMethodDeclaration as parent node of method related children of AnnotationTypeMemberDeclaration
JavaCC generated artifacts updated to JavaCC 4.1.
Dependencies updates: asm updated to 3.2
Ant requirement is now 1.7.0 or higher for compilation
    JUnit testing jar is packaged on 1.7.0+ only in ant binary distributions
    Note that the ant task still works with 1.6.0 and higher
All comment types are now stored in ASTCompilationUnit, not just formal ones
Fixed false negative in UselessOverridingMethod
Fixed handling of escape characters in UseIndexOfChar and AppendCharacterWithChar
Fixed ClassCastException on generic method in BeanMembersShouldSerialize
Fixed ClassCastException in symbol table code
Support for Java 1.4 runtime dropped, PMD now requires Java 5 or higher.  PMD can still process Java 1.4 source files.
Support for Java 1.7
Text renderer is now silent if there's no violation instead of displaying "No problems found!"
RuleSet short names now require a language prefix, 'basic' is now 'java-basic', and 'rulesets/basic.xml' is now 'rulesets/java/basic.xml'
The JSP RuleSets are now in the 'jsp' language, and are 'jsp-basic', 'jsp-basic-jsf', 'rulesets/jsp/basic.xml' and 'rulesets/jsp/basic-jsp.xml'
Enhanced logging in the ClassTypeResolver to provide more detailed messaging.
AvoidUsingHardCodedIP modified to not use InetAddress.getByName(String), instead does better pattern analysis.
The JSP/JSF parser can now parse Unicode input.
The JSP/JSP parser can now handle <script>...</script> tags.  The AST HtmlScript node contains the content.
Added Ecmascript as a supported language for CPD.
The RuleSet XML Schema namespace is now: http://pmd.sourceforge.net/ruleset/2.0.0
The RuleSet XML Schema is located in the source at: etc/ruleset_2_0_0.xsd
The RuleSet DTD is located in the source at: etc/ruleset_2_0_0.dtd
Improved include/exclude pattern matching performance for ends-with type patterns.
Modify (and hopefully fixed) CPD algorithm thanks to a patch from Juan Jesús García de Soria.
Fixed character reference in xml report - thanks to Seko
Enhanced SuspiciousEqualsMethodName rule - thanks to Andy Throgmorton
Add a script to launch CPDGUI on Unix system - thanks to Tom Wheeler

New Java rules:

    Basic ruleset: ExtendsObject,CheckSkipResult,AvoidBranchingStatementAsLastInLoop,DontCallThreadRun,DontUseFloatTypeForLoopIndices
    Controversial ruleset: AvoidLiteralsInIfCondition, AvoidPrefixingMethodParameters, OneDeclarationPerLine, UseConcurrentHashMap
    Coupling ruleset: LoosePackageCoupling,LawofDemeter
    Design ruleset: LogicInversion,UseVarargs,FieldDeclarationsShouldBeAtStartOfClass,GodClass
    Empty ruleset: EmptyInitializer,EmptyStatementBlock
    Import ruleset: UnnecessaryFullyQualifiedName
    Optimization ruleset: RedundantFieldInitializer
    Naming ruleset: ShortClassName, GenericsNaming
    StrictException ruleset: AvoidThrowingNewInstanceOfSameException, AvoidCatchingGenericException, AvoidLosingExceptionInformation
    Unnecessary ruleset: UselessParentheses
    JUnit ruleset: JUnitTestContainsTooManyAsserts, UseAssertTrueInsteadOfAssertEquals
    Logging with Jakarta Commons ruleset: GuardDebugLogging

New Java ruleset:
    android.xml: new rules specific to the Android platform

New JSP rules:
    Basic ruleset: NoInlineScript

New ECMAScript rules:
    Basic ruleset: AssignmentInOperand,ConsistentReturn,InnaccurateNumericLiteral,ScopeForInVariable,UnreachableCode,EqualComparison,GlobalVariable
    Braces ruleset: ForLoopsMustUseBraces,IfStmtsMustUseBraces,IfElseStmtsMustUseBraces,WhileLoopsMustUseBraces
    Unnecessary ruleset: UnnecessaryParentheses,UnnecessaryBlock

New XML rules:
    Basic ruleset: MistypedCDATASection

November 4, 2011 - 4.3:

Add support for Java 7 grammer - thanks to Dinesh Bolkensteyn and SonarSource
Add options --ignore-literals and --ignore-identifiers to the CPD command line task, thanks to Cd-Man
Fixed character reference in xml report - thanks to Seko
Add C# support for CPD - thanks to Florian Bauer
Fix small bug in Rule Designer UI
Improve TooManyMethods rule - thanks to a patch from Riku Nykanen
Improve DoNotCallSystemExit - thanks to a patch from Steven Christou
Fix false negative for UseArraysAsList when the array was passed as method parameter - thanks to Andy Throgmorton
Enhanced SuspiciousEqualsMethodName rule - thanks to Andy Throgmorton
Add a script to launch CPDGUI on Unix system - thanks to Tom Wheeler

New Rule:
    Basic ruleset: DontCallThreadRun - thanks to Andy Throgmorton
    Logging with Jakarta Commons ruleset: GuardDebugLogging

September 14, 2011 - 4.2.6:

Fixed bug 2920057 - False + : CloseRessource whith an external getter
Fixed bug 1808110 - Fixed performance issue on PreserveStackTrace
Fixed bug 2832322 -  cpd.xml file tag path attribute should be entity-encoded
Fixed bug 2590258 - NPE with nicerhtml output
Fixed bug 2317099 - False + in SimplifyCondition
Fixed bug 2606609 - False "UnusedImports" positive in package-info.java
Fixed bug 2645268 - ClassCastException in UselessOperationOnImmutable.getDeclaration
Fixed bug 2724653 - AvoidThreadGroup reports false positives
Fixed bug 2835074 - False -: DoubleCheckedLocking with reversed null check
Fixed bug 2826119 - False +: DoubleCheckedLocking warning with volatile field
Fixed bug 2904832 - Type resolution not working for ASTType when using an inner class

Modify (and hopefully fixed) CPD algorithm thanks to a patch from Juan Jesús García de Soria.
Correct -benchmark reporting of Rule visits via the RuleChain
Fix issue with Type Resolution incorrectly handling of Classes with same name as a java.lang Class.
The JSP/JSF parser can now parse Unicode input.
The JSP/JSP parser can now handle <script>...</script> tags.  The AST HtmlScript node contains the content.
Added Ecmascript as a supported language for CPD.
Improved include/exclude pattern matching performance for ends-with type patterns.

Dependencies updates: asm updated to 3.2

Android ruleset: CallSuperLast rule now also checks for finish() redefinitions

New rule:
    Android: DoNotHardCodeSDCard
    Controversial : AvoidLiteralsInIfCondition (patch 2591627), UseConcurrentHashMap
    StrictExceptions : AvoidCatchingGenericException, AvoidLosingExceptionInformation
    Naming : GenericsNaming
    JSP: NoInlineScript

February 08, 2009 - 4.2.5:

Enhanced logging in the ClassTypeResolver to provide more detailed messaging.
Fixed bug 2315623 - @SuppressWarnings("PMD.UseSingleton") has no effect
Fixed bug 2230809 - False +: ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal
Fixed bug 2338341 - ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException in CPD (on Ruby)
Fixed bug 2315599 - False +: UseSingleton with class containing constructor
Fixed bug 1955852 - false positives for UnusedPrivateMethod & UnusedLocalVariable
Fixed bug 2404700 - UseSingleton should not act on enums
Fixed bug 2225474 - VariableNamingConventions does not work with nonprimitives
Fixed bug 1609038 - Xslt report generators break if path contains "java"
Fixed bug - JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert now detects Junit 4 Assert.assert...  constructs
Fixed bug 2142986 - UselessOverridingMethod doesn't consider annotations
Fixed bug 2027626 - False + : AvoidFinalLocalVariable

New rule:
    StrictExceptions : AvoidThrowingNewInstanceOfSameException
New ruleset:
    android.xml: new rules specific to the Android platform

October 12, 2008 - 4.2.4:

Fixed bug 1481051 - false + UnusedNullCheckInEquals (and other false positives too)
Fixed bug 1943204 - Ant task: <ruleset> path should be relative to Ant basedir
Fixed bug 2139720 - Exception in PMD Rule Designer for inline comments in source
Fixed patch 2075906 - Add toString() to the rule UnnecessaryWrapperObjectCreation
Fixed ClassCastException on generic method in BeanMembersShouldSerialize
Fixed ClassCastException in symbol table code

August 31, 2008 - 4.2.3:

JavaCC generated artifacts updated to JavaCC 4.1d1.
Java grammar enhanced to include AnnotationMethodDeclaration as parent node of method related children of AnnotationTypeMemberDeclaration
Fixes for exclude-pattern
Updates to RuleChain to honor RuleSet exclude-pattern
Upgrading UselessOperationOnImmutable to detect more use cases, especially on String and fix false positives
Fixed bug 1988829 - Violation reported without source file name (actually a fix to ConsecutiveLiteralAppends)
Fixed bug 1989814 - false +: ConsecutiveLiteralAppends
Fixed bug 1977230 - false positive: UselessOverridingMethod
Fixed bug 1998185 - BeanMembersShouldSerialize vs @SuppressWarnings("serial")
Fixed bug 2002722 - false + in UseStringBufferForStringAppends
Fixed bug 2056318 - False positive for AvoidInstantiatingObjectsInLoops
Fixed bug 1977438 - False positive for UselessStringValueOf
Fixed bug 2050064 - False + SuspiciousOctalEscape with backslash literal
Fixed bug 1556594 - Wonky detection of NullAssignment
Optimizations and false positive fixes in PreserveStackTrace
@SuppressWarnings("all") disables all warnings
All comment types are now stored in ASTCompilationUnit, not just formal ones
Fixed false negative in UselessOverridingMethod
Fixed handling of escape characters in UseIndexOfChar and AppendCharacterWithChar

New rule:
    Basic ruleset:  EmptyInitializer

May 20, 2008 - 4.2.2:

Fixed false positive in UnusedImports: javadoc comments are parsed to check @see and other tags
Fixed parsing bug: constant fields in annotation classes
Bug fix: NPE in MoreThanOneLogger
UnnecessaryParentheses now checks all expressions, not just return statements

April 11, 2008 - 4.2.1:

'41' and '42' shortcuts for rulesets added
Fixed bug 1928009 - Error using migration ruleset in PMD 4.2
Fixed bug 1932242 - EmptyMethodInAbstractClassShouldBeAbstract false +
Fixed bug 1808110 - PreserveStackTrace

AvoidDuplicateLiteralRule now has 'skipAnnotations' boolean property
ruleset.dtd and ruleset_xml_schema.xsd added to jar file in rulesets directory
Update RuleSetWriter to handle non-Apache TRAX implementations, add an option to not use XML Namespaces
Added file encoding option to CPD GUI, which already existed for the command line and Ant
bin and java14/bin scripts:
    retroweaver version was not correct in java14/bin scripts
    support for extra languages in cpd.sh
    standard unix scripts can be used with cygwin

March 25, 2008 - 4.2:

Fixed bug 1920155 - CheckResultSet: Does not pass for loop conditionals

March 21, 2008 - 4.2rc2:

Fixed bug 1912831 - False + UnusedPrivateMethod with varargs
Fixed bug 1913536 - Rule Designer does not recognize JSP(XML)
Add -auxclasspath option for specifying Type Resolution classpath from command line and auxclasspath nested element for ant task.
Fixed formatting problems in loggers.

Ant task upgrade:
    Added a new attribute 'maxRuleCount' to indicate whether or not to fail the build if PMD finds that much violations.

March 07, 2008 - 4.2rc1:

Fixed bug 1866198 - PMD should not register global Logger
Fixed bug 1843273 - False - on SimplifyBooleanReturns
Fixed bug 1848888 - Fixed false positive in UseEqualsToCompareStrings
Fixed bug 1874313 - Documentation bugs
Fixed bug 1855409 - False + in EmptyMethodInAbstractClassShouldBeAbstract
Fixed bug 1888967 - Updated xpath query to detect more "empty" methods.
Fixed bug 1891399 - Check for JUnit4 test method fails
Fixed bug 1894821 - False - for Test Class without Test Cases
Fixed bug 1882457 - PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons rule not working OK
Fixed bug 1842505 - XML output incorrect for inner classes
Fixed bug 1808158 - Constructor args could also be final
Fixed bug 1902351 - AvoidReassigningParameters not identify parent field
Fixed other false positives in EmptyMethodInAbstractClassShouldBeAbstract
Fixed other issues in SimplifyBooleanReturns
Modified AvoidReassigningParameter to also check constructor arguments for reassignement

New rules:
    Basic ruleset: AvoidMultipleUnaryOperators
    Controversial ruleset: DoNotCallGarbageCollectionExplicitly,UseObjectForClearerAPI
    Design ruleset : ReturnEmptyArrayRatherThanNull,TooFewBranchesForASwitchStatement,AbstractClassWithoutAnyMethod
    Codesize : TooManyMethods
    StrictExceptions : DoNotThrowExceptionInFinally
    Strings : AvoidStringBufferField

Rule upgrade:
    CyclomaticComplexity now can be configured to display only class average complexity or method complexity, or both.

Designer upgrade:
    A new panel for symbols and a tooltips on AST node that displays line, column and access node attributes (private,
    static, abstract,...)

1.7 added as a valid option for targetjdk.
New elements under <ruleset>: <exclude-pattern> to match files exclude from processing, with <include-pattern> to override.
Rules can now be written which produce violations based upon aggregate file processing (i.e. cross/multiple file violations).
PMD Rule Designer can now shows Symbol Table contents for the selected AST node.
PMD Rule Designer shows position info in tooltip for AST nodes and highlights matching code for selected AST node in code window.
CPD Ant task will report to System.out when 'outputFile' not given.
RuleSetWriter class can be used to Serialize a RuleSet to XML in a standard fashion.  Recommend PMD IDE plugins standardize their behavior.
retroweaver updated to version 2.0.5.

November 17, 2007 - 4.1:

Fixed annotation bug: ClassCastException when a formal parameter had multiple annotations
Added a Visual Studio renderer for CPD; just use "--format vs".
Dependencies updates: asm to 3.1, retroweaver to 2.0.2, junit to 4.4
new ant target ("regress") to test regression bugs only

November 01, 2007 - 4.1rc1:

New rules:
    Basic ruleset: AvoidUsingHardCodedIP,CheckResultSet
    Controversial ruleset: AvoidFinalLocalVariable,AvoidUsingShortType,AvoidUsingVolatile,AvoidUsingNativeCode,AvoidAccessibilityAlteration
    Design ruleset: ClassWithOnlyPrivateConstructorsShouldBeFinal,EmptyMethodInAbstractClassShouldBeAbstract
    Imports ruleset: TooManyStaticImports
    J2ee ruleset: DoNotCallSystemExit, StaticEJBFieldShouldBeFinal,DoNotUseThreads
    Strings ruleset: UseEqualsToCompareStrings

Fixed bug 674394  - fixed false positive in DuplicateImports for disambiguation import
Fixed bug 631681  - fixed false positive in UnusedPrivateField when field is accessed by outer class
Fixed bug 985989  - fixed false negative in ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod for inner static classes
Fixed bug 1409944 - fixed false positive in SingularField for lock objects
Fixed bug 1472195 - fixed false positives in PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons when the string is used as a parameter
Fixed bug 1522517 - fixed false positive in UselessOverridingMethod for clone method
Fixed bug 1744065 - fixed false positive in BooleanInstantiation when a custom Boolean is used
Fixed bug 1765613 - fixed NullPointerException in CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable when checking enum
Fixed bug 1740480 - fixed false positive in ImmutableField when the assignment is inside an 'if'
Fixed bug 1702782 - fixed false positive in UselessOperationOnImmutable when an Immutable on which an operation is performed is compareTo'd
Fixed bugs 1764288/1744069/1744071 - When using Type Resolution all junit test cases will notice if you're using an extended TestCase
Fixed bug 1793215 - pmd-nicerhtml.xsl does not display line numbers
Fixes bug 1796928 - fixed false positive in AvoidThrowingRawExceptionTypes, when a Type name is the same as a RawException.
Fixed bug 1811506 - False - : UnusedFormalParameter (property "checkall" needs to be set)
Fixed false negative in UnnecessaryCaseChange

The Java 1.5 source code parser is now the default for testcode used in PMD's unit tests.
Added TypeResolution to the XPath rule. Use typeof function to determine if a node is of a particular type
Adding a GenericLiteralChecker, a generic rule that require a regex as property. It will log a violation if a Literal is matched by the regex. See the new rule AvoidUsingHardCodedIP for an example.
Adding support for multiple line span String in CPD's AbstractTokenizer, this may change, for the better, CPD's Ruby parsing.
This release adds 'nicehtml', with the plan for the next major release to make nicehtml->html, and html->oldhtml. This feature uses an XSLT transformation, default stylesheet maybe override with '-xslt filename'.
New CPD command line feature : Using more than one directory for sources. You can now have several '--files' on the command line.
SingularField greatly improved to generate very few false positives (none?). Moved from controversial to design. Two options added to restore old behaviour (mostly).
Jaxen updated to 1.1.1, now Literal[@Image='""'] works in XPath expressions.

July 20, 2007 - 4.0

Fixed bug 1697397 - fixed false positives in ClassCastExceptionWithToArray
Fixed bug 1728789 - removed redundant rule AvoidNonConstructorMethodsWithClassName; MethodWithSameNameAsEnclosingClass is faster and does the same thing.

July 12, 2007 - 4.0rc2:

New rules:
    Typeresolution ruleset: SignatureDeclareThrowsException - re-implementation using the new Type Resolution facility (old rule is still available)
Fixed bug 1698550 - CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable now accepts a clone method that throws CloneNotSupportedException in a final class
Fixed bug 1680568 - The new typeresolution SignatureDeclareThrowsException rule now ignores setUp and tearDown in JUnit 4 tests and tests that do not directly extend TestCase
The new typeresolution SignatureDeclareThrowsException rule can now ignore JUnit classes completely by setting the IgnoreJUnitCompletely property
Fixed false positive in UselessOperationOnImmutable
PMD now defaults to using a Java 1.5 source code parser.

June 22, 2007 - 4.0rc1:

New rules:
    Strict exception ruleset: DoNotExtendJavaLangError
    Basic JSP ruleset: JspEncoding
    J2EE ruleset: MDBAndSessionBeanNamingConvention, RemoteSessionInterfaceNamingConvention, LocalInterfaceSessionNamingConvention, LocalHomeNamingConvention, RemoteInterfaceNamingConvention
    Optimizations ruleset: AddEmptyString
    Naming: BooleanGetMethodName
New rulesets:
    Migrating To JUnit4: Rules that help move from JUnit 3 to JUnit 4
Fixed bug 1670717 - 'Copy xml to clipboard' menu command now works again in the Designer
Fixed bug 1618858 - PMD no longer raises an exception on XPath like '//ConditionalExpression//ConditionalExpression'
Fixed bug 1626232 - Commons logging rules (ProperLogger and UseCorrectExceptionLogging) now catch more cases
Fixed bugs 1626201 & 1633683 - BrokenNullCheck now catches more cases
Fixed bug 1626715 - UseAssertSameInsteadOfAssertTrue now correctly checks classes which contain the null constant
Fixed bug 1531216 - ImmutableField. NameOccurrence.isSelfAssignment now recognizes this.x++ as a self assignment
Fixed bug 1634078 - StringToString now recognizes toString on a String Array, rather than an element.
Fixed bug 1631646 - UselessOperationOnImmutable doesn't throw on variable.method().variable.
Fixed bug 1627830 - UseLocaleWithCaseConversions now works with compound string operations
Fixed bug 1613807 - DontImportJavaLang rule allows import to Thread inner classes
Fixed bug 1637573 - The PMD Ant task no longer closes System.out if toConsole is set
Fixed bug 1451251 - A new UnusedImports rule, using typeresolution, finds unused import on demand rules
Fixed bug 1613793 - MissingSerialVersionUID rule now doesn't fire on abstract classes
Fixed bug 1666646 - ImmutableField rule doesn't report against volatile variables
Fixed bug 1693924 - Type resolution now works for implicit imports
Fixed bug 1705716 - Annotation declarations now trigger a new scope level in the symbol table.
Fixed bug 1743938 - False +: InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration with multiply
Fixed bug 1657957 - UseStringBufferForStringAppends now catches self-assignments
Applied patch 1612455 - RFE 1411022 CompareObjectsWithEquals now catches the case where comparison is against new Object
Implemented RFE 1562230 - Added migration rule to check for instantiation of Short/Byte/Long
Implemented RFE 1627581 - SuppressWarnings("unused") now suppresses all warnings in unusedcode.xml
XPath rules are now chained together for an extra speedup in processing
PMD now requires JDK 1.5 to be compiled. Java 1.4 support is provided using Retroweaver
- PMD will still analyze code from earlier JDKs
- to run pmd with 1.4, use the files from the java14 directory (weaved pmd jar and support files)
TypeResolution now looks at some ASTName nodes.
Memory footprint reduced: most renderers now use less memory by generating reports on the fly.
Ant task now takes advantage of multithreading code and on the fly renderers
Ant task now logs more debug info when using -verbose
PMD command line now has -benchmark: output a benchmark report upon completion; default to System.err

December 19, 2006 - 3.9:

New rules:
    Basic ruleset: BigIntegerInstantiation, AvoidUsingOctalValues
    Codesize ruleset: NPathComplexity, NcssTypeCount, NcssMethodCount, NcssConstructorCount
    Design ruleset: UseCollectionIsEmpty
    Strings ruleset: StringBufferInstantiationWithChar
    Typeresolution ruleset: Loose Coupling - This is a re-implementation using the new Type Resolution facility
Fixed bug 1610730 - MisplacedNullCheck now catches more cases
Fixed bug 1570915 - AvoidRethrowingException no longer reports a false positive for certain nested exceptions.
Fixed bug 1571324 - UselessStringValueOf no longer reports a false positive for additive expressions.
Fixed bug 1573795 - PreserveStackTrace doesn't throw CastClassException on exception with 0 args
Fixed bug 1573591 - NonThreadSafeSingleton doesn't throw NPE when using this keyword
Fixed bug 1371753 - UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn is now less aggressive in its reporting.
Fixed bug 1566547 - Annotations with an empty MemberValueArrayInitializer are now parsed properly.
Fixed bugs 1060761 / 1433119 & RFE 1196954 - CloseResource now takes an optional parameter to identify closure methods
Fixed bug 1579615 - OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcode no longer throws an Exception on equals methods that don't have Object as a parameter type.
Fixed bug 1580859 - AvoidDecimalLiteralsInBigDecimalConstructor now catches more cases.
Fixed bug 1581123 - False +: UnnecessaryWrapperObjectCreation.
Fixed bug 1592710 - VariableNamingConventions no longer reports false positives on certain enum declarations.
Fixed bug 1593292 - The CPD GUI now works with the 'by extension' option selected.
Fixed bug 1560944 - CPD now skips symlinks.
Fixed bug 1570824 - HTML reports generated on Windows no longer contain double backslashes.  This caused problems when viewing those reports with Apache.
Fixed bug 1031966 - Re-Implemented CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable as a typeresolution rule. This rule can now detect super classes/interfaces which are cloneable
Fixed bug 1571309 - Optional command line options may be used either before or after the mandatory arguments
Applied patch 1551189 - SingularField false + for initialization blocks
Applied patch 1573981 - false + in CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable
Applied patch 1574988 - false + in OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcode
Applied patch 1583167 - Better test code management. Internal JUnits can now be written in XML's
Applied patch 1613674 - Support classpaths with spaces in pmd.bat
Applied patch 1615519 - controversial/DefaultPackage XPath rule is wrong
Applied patch 1615546 - Added option to command line to write directly to a file
Implemented RFE 1566313 - Command Line now takes minimumpriority attribute to filter out rulesets
PMD now requires JDK 1.4 to run
- PMD will still analyze code from earlier JDKs
- PMD now uses the built-in JDK 1.4 regex utils vs Jakarta ORO
- PMD now uses the JDK javax.xml APIs rather than being hardcoded to use Xerces and Xalan
SummaryHTML Report changes from Brent Fisher - now contains linePrefix to support source output from javadoc using "linksource"
Fixed CSVRenderer - had flipped line and priority columns
Fixed bug in Ant task - CSV reports were being output as text.
Fixed false negatives in UseArraysAsList.
Fixed several JDK 1.5 parsing bugs.
Fixed several rules (exceptions on jdk 1.5 and jdk 1.6 source code).
Fixed array handling in AvoidReassigningParameters and UnusedFormalParameter.
Fixed bug in UselessOverridingMethod: false + when adding synchronization.
Fixed false positives in LocalVariableCouldBeFinal.
Fixed false positives in MethodArgumentCouldBeFinal.
Modified annotation suppression to use @SuppressWarning("PMD") to suppress all warnings and @SuppressWarning("PMD.UnusedLocalVariable") to suppress a particular rule's warnings.
Rules can now call RuleContext.getSourceType() if they need to make different checks on JDK 1.4 and 1.5 code.
CloseResource rule now checks code without java.sql import.
ArrayIsStoredDirectly rule now checks Constructors
undo/redo added to text areas in Designer.
Better 'create rule XML' panel in Designer.
use of entrySet to iterate over Maps.
1.6 added as a valid option for targetjdk.
PMD now allows rules to use Type Resolution. This was referenced in patch 1257259.
Renderers use less memory when generating reports.
New DynamicXPathRule class to speed up XPath based rules by providing a base type for the XPath expression.
Multithreaded processing on multi core or multi cpu systems.
Performance Refactoring, XPath rules re-written as Java:
    AssignmentInOperand
    AvoidDollarSigns
    DontImportJavaLang
    DontImportSun
    MoreThanOneLogger
    SuspiciousHashcodeMethodName
    UselessStringValueOf

October 4, 2006 - 3.8:

New rules:
    Basic ruleset: BrokenNullCheck
    Strict exceptions ruleset: AvoidRethrowingException
    Optimizations ruleset: UnnecessaryWrapperObjectCreation
    Strings ruleset: UselessStringValueOf
Fixed bug 1498910 - AssignmentInOperand no longer has a typo in the message.
Fixed bug 1498960 - DontImportJavaLang no longer reports static imports of java.lang members.
Fixed bug 1417106 - MissingBreakInSwitch no longer flags stmts where every case has either a return or a throw.
Fixed bug 1412529 - UncommentedEmptyConstructor no longer flags private constructors.
Fixed bug 1462189 - InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration now resets when it reaches setLength the same way it does at a Constructor
Fixed bug 1497815 - InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration rule now takes the length of the constructor into account, and adds the length of the initial string to its initial length
Fixed bug 1504842 - ExceptionSignatureDeclaration no longer flags methods starting with 'test'.
Fixed bug 1516728 - UselessOverridingMethod no longer raises an NPE on methods that use generics.
Fixed bug 1522054 - BooleanInstantiation now detects instantiations inside method calls.
Fixed bug 1522056 - UseStringBufferForStringAppends now flags appends which occur in static initializers and constructors
Fixed bug 1526530 - SingularField now finds fields which are hidden at the method or static level
Fixed bug 1529805 - UnusedModifier no longer throws NPEs on JDK 1.5 enums.
Fixed bug 1531593 - UnnecessaryConversionTemporary no longer reports false positives when toString() is invoked inside the call to 'new Long/Integer/etc()'.
Fixed bug 1512871 - Improved C++ tokenizer error messages - now they include the filename.
Fixed bug 1531152 - CloneThrowsCloneNotSupportedException now reports the proper line number.
Fixed bug 1531236 - IdempotentOperations reports fewer false positives.
Fixed bug 1544564 - LooseCoupling rule now checks for ArrayLists
Fixed bug 1544565 - NonThreadSafeSingleton now finds if's with compound statements
Fixed bug 1561784 - AbstractOptimizationRule no longer throws ClassCastExceptions on certain postfix expressions.
Fixed a bug in AvoidProtectedFieldInFinalClass - it no longer reports false positives for protected fields in inner classes.
Fixed a bug in the C++ grammar - the tokenizer now properly recognizes macro definitions which are followed by a multiline comment.
Modified C++ tokenizer to use the JavaCC STATIC option; this results in about a 30% speedup in tokenizing.
Implemented RFE 1501850 - UnusedFormalParameter now catches cases where a parameter is assigned to but not used.
Applied patch 1481024 (implementing RFE 1490181)- NOPMD messages can now be reported with a user specified msg, e.g., //NOPMD - this is expected
Added JSP support to the copy/paste detector.
Placed JSF/JSP ruleset names in rulesets/jsprulesets.properties
Added the image to the ASTEnumConstant nodes.
Added new XSLT stylesheet for CPD XML->HTML from Max Tardiveau.
Refactored UseIndexOfChar to extract common functionality into AbstractPoorMethodCall.
Improved CPD GUI and Designer look/functionality; thanks to Brian Remedios for the changes!
Rewrote the NOPMD mechanism to collect NOPMD markers as the source file is tokenized.  This eliminates an entire scan of each source file.
Applied patch from Jason Bennett to enhance CyclomaticComplexity rule to account for conditional or/and nodes, do stmts, and catch blocks.
Applied patch from Xavier Le Vourch to reduce false postives from CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable.
Updated Jaxen library to beta 10.
Performance Refactoring, XPath rules re-written as Java:
    BooleanInstantiation
    UselessOperationOnImmutable
    OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcode
    UnnecessaryReturn
    UseStringBufferForStringAppends
    SingularField
    NonThreadSafeSingleton

June 1, 2006 - 3.7:

New rules:
    Basic-JSP ruleset: DuplicateJspImport
    Design ruleset: PreserveStackTrace
    J2EE ruleset: UseProperClassLoader
Implemented RFE 1462019 - Add JSPs to Ant Task
Implemented RFE 1462020 - Add JSPs to Designer
Fixed bug 1461426 InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration does not consider paths
Fixed bug 1462184 False +: InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration - wrong size
Fixed bug 1465574 - UnusedPrivateMethod no longer reports false positives when a private method is called from a method with a parameter of the same name.
Fixed bug 1114003 - UnusedPrivateMethod no longer reports false positives when two methods have the same name and number of arguments but different types.  The fix causes PMD to miss a few valid cases, but, c'est la vie.
Fixed bug 1472843 - UnusedPrivateMethod no longer reports false positives when a private method is only called from a method that contains a variable with the same name as that method.
Fixed bug 1461442 - UseAssertSameInsteadOfAssertTrue now ignores comparisons to null; UseAssertNullInsteadOfAssertTrue will report those.
Fixed bug 1474778 - UnnecessaryCaseChange no longer flags usages of toUpperCase(Locale).
Fixed bug 1423429 - ImmutableField no longer reports false positives on variables which can be set via an anonymous inner class that is created in the constructor.
Fixed major bug in CPD; it was not picking up files other than .java or .jsp.
Fixed a bug in CallSuperInConstructor; it now checks inner classes/enums more carefully.
Fixed a bug in VariableNamingConventions; it was not setting the warning message properly.
Fixed bug in C/C++ parser; a '$' is now allowed in an identifier.  This is useful in VMS.
Fixed a symbol table bug; PMD no longer crashes on enumeration declarations in the same scope containing the same field name
Fixed a bug in ASTVariableDeclaratorId that triggered a ClassCastException if a annotation was used on a parameter.
Added RuleViolation.getBeginColumn()/getEndColumn()
Added an optional 'showSuppressed' item to the Ant task; this is false by default and toggles whether or not suppressed items are shown in the report.
Added an IRuleViolation interface and modified various code classes (include Renderer implementations and Report) to use it.
Modified JJTree grammar to use conditional node descriptors for various expression nodes and to use node suppression for ASTModifier nodes; this replaces a bunch of DiscardableNodeCleaner hackery.  It also fixed bug 1445026.
Modified C/CPP grammar to only build the lexical analyzer; we're not using the parser for CPD, just the token manager.  This reduces the PMD jar file size by about 50 KB.

March 29, 2006 - 3.6:

New rules:
    Basic ruleset: AvoidThreadGroup
    Design ruleset: UnsynchronizedStaticDateFormatter
    Strings ruleset: InefficientEmptyStringCheck, InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration
    JUnit ruleset: SimplifyBooleanAssertion
    Basic-JSF ruleset: DontNestJsfInJstlIteration
    Basic-JSP ruleset: NoLongScripts, NoScriptlets, NoInlineStyleInformation, NoClassAttribute, NoJspForward, IframeMissingSrcAttribute, NoHtmlComments
Fixed bug 1414985 - ConsecutiveLiteralAppends now checks for intervening references between appends.
Fixed bug 1418424 - ConsecutiveLiteralAppends no longer flags appends in separate methods.
Fixed bug 1416167 - AppendCharacterWithChar now catches cases involving escaped characters.
Fixed bug 1421409 - Ant task now has setter to allow minimumPriority attribute to be used.
Fixed bug 1416164 - InefficientStringBuffering no longer reports false positives on the three argument version of StringBuffer.append().
Fixed bug 1415326 - JUnitTestsShouldContainAsserts no longer errors out on JDK 1.5 generics.
Fixed bug 1415333 - CyclomaticComplexity no longer errors out on JDK 1.5 enums.
Fixed bug 1415663 - PMD no longer fails to parse abstract classes declared in a method.
Fixed bug 1433439 - UseIndexOfChar no longer reports false positives on case like indexOf('a' + getFoo()).
Fixed bug 1435218 - LoggerIsNotStaticFinal no longer reports false positives for local variables.
Fixed bug 1413745 - ArrayIsStoredDirectly no longer reports false positives for array deferences.
Fixed bug 1435751 - Added encoding type of UTF-8 to the CPD XML file.
Fixed bug 1441539 - ConsecutiveLiteralAppends no longer flags appends() involving method calls.
Fixed bug 1339470 - PMD no longer fails to parse certain non-static initializers.
Fixed bug 1425772 - PMD no longer fails with errors in ASTFieldDeclaration when parsing some JDK 1.5 code.
Fixed bugs 1448123 and 1449175 - AvoidFieldNameMatchingTypeName, SingularField, TooManyFields, and AvoidFieldNameMatchingMethodName no longer error out on enumerations.
Fixed bug 1444654 - migrating_to_14 and migrating_to_15 no longer refer to rule tests.
Fixed bug 1445231 - TestClassWithoutTestCases: no longer flags abstract classes.
Fixed bug 1445765 - PMD no longer uses huge amounts of memory.  However, you need to use RuleViolation.getBeginLine(); RuleViolation.getNode() is no more.
Fixed bug 1447295 - UseNotifyAllInsteadOfNotify no longer flags notify() methods that have a parameter.
Fixed bug 1455965 - MethodReturnsInternalArray no longer flags variations on 'return new Object[] {}'.
Implemented RFE 1415487 - Added a rulesets/releases/35.xml ruleset (and similar rulesets for previous releases) contains rules new to PMD v3.5
Wouter Zelle fixed a false positive in NonThreadSafeSingleton.
Wouter Zelle fixed a false positive in InefficientStringBuffering.
The CPD Ant task now supports an optional 'language' attribute.
Removed some ill-advised casts from the parsers.
Fixed bug in CallSuperInConstructor; it no longer flag classes without extends clauses.
Fixed release packaging; now entire xslt/ directory contents are included.
Added more XSLT from Dave Corley - you can use them to filter PMD reports by priority level.
You can now access the name of a MemberValuePair node using getImage().
PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons was rewritten in XPath.
Added a getVersionString method to the TargetJDKVersion interface.
Added an option '--targetjdk' argument to the Benchmark utility.
Applied a patch from Wouter Zelle to clean up the Ant Formatter class, fix a TextRenderer bug, and make toConsole cleaner.
Rewrote AvoidCallingFinalize in Java; fixed bug and runs much faster, too.
Uploaded ruleset schema to http://pmd.sf.net/ruleset_xml_schema.xsd
UseIndexOfChar now catches cases involving lastIndexOf.
Rules are now run in the order in which they're listed in a ruleset file.  Internally, they're now stored in a List vs a Set, and RuleSet.getRules() now returns a Collection.
Upgraded to JUnit version 3.8.2.

Jan 25, 2006 - 3.5:

New rules:
 Basic ruleset: UselessOperationOnImmutable, MisplacedNullCheck, UnusedNullCheckInEquals
 Migration ruleset: IntegerInstantiation
 JUnit ruleset: UseAssertNullInsteadOfAssertTrue
 Strings ruleset: AppendCharacterWithChar, ConsecutiveLiteralAppends, UseIndexOfChar
 Design ruleset: AvoidConstantsInterface
 Optimizations ruleset: UseArraysAsList, AvoidArrayLoops
 Controversial ruleset: BooleanInversion
Fixed bug 1371980 - InefficientStringBuffering no longer flags StringBuffer methods other than append().
Fixed bug 1277373 - InefficientStringBuffering now catches more cases.
Fixed bug 1376760 - InefficientStringBuffering no longer throws a NullPointerException when processing certain expressions.
Fixed bug 1371757 - Misleading example in AvoidSynchronizedAtMethodLevel
Fixed bug 1373510 - UseAssertSameInsteadOfAssertTrue no longer has a typo in its message, and its message is more clear.
Fixed bug 1375290 - @SuppressWarnings annotations are now implemented correctly; they accept one blank argument to suppress all warnings.
Fixed bug 1376756 - UselessOverridingMethod no longer throws an exception on overloaded methods.
Fixed bug 1378358 - StringInstantiation no longer throws ClassCastExceptions on certain allocation patterns.
Fixed bug 1371741 - UncommentedEmptyConstructor no longer flags constructors that consist of a this() or a super() invocation.
Fixed bug 1277373 - InefficientStringBuffering no longer flags concatenations that involve a static final String.
Fixed bug 1379701 - CompareObjectsWithEquals no longer flags comparisons of array elements.
Fixed bug 1380969 - UnusedPrivateMethod no longer flags private static methods that are only invoked in a static context from a field declaration.
Fixed bug 1384594 - Added a 'prefix' property for BeanMembersShouldSerializeRule
Fixed bug 1394808 - Fewer missed hits for AppendCharacterWithChar and InefficientStringBuffering, thanks to Allan Caplan for catching these
Fixed bug 1400754 - A NPE is no longer thrown on certain JDK 1.5 enum usages.
Partially fixed bug 1371753 - UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn message now reflects the fact that that rule flags all types
Fixed a bug in UseStringBufferLength; it no longers fails with an exception on expressions like StringBuffer.toString.equals(x)
Fixed a bug in CPD's C/C++ parser so that it no longer fails on multi-line literals; thx to Tom Judge for the nice patch.
CPD now recognizes '--language c' and '--language cpp' as both mapping to the C/C++ parser.
Modified renderers to support disabling printing of suppressed warnings.  Introduced a new AbstractRenderer class that all Renderers can extends to get the current behavior - that is, suppressed violations are printed.
Implemented RFE 1375435 - you can now embed regular expressions inside XPath rules, i.e., //ClassOrInterfaceDeclaration[matches(@Image, 'F?o')].
Added current CLASSPATH to pmd.bat.
UnusedFormalParameter now catches unused constructor parameters, and its warning message now reflects whether it caught a method or a constructor param.
Rebuilt JavaCC parser with JavaCC 4.0.
Added jakarta-oro-2.0.8.jar as a new dependency to support regular expression in XPath rules.
Ant task now supports a 'minimumPriority' attribute; only rules with this priority or higher will be run.
Renamed Ant task 'printToConsole' attribute to 'toConsole' and it can only be used inside a formatter element.
Added David Corley's Javascript report, more details are here: http://tomcopeland.blogs.com/juniordeveloper/2005/12/demo_of_some_ni.html

November 30, 2005 - 3.4:

New rules:
 Basic ruleset: ClassCastExceptionWithToArray, AvoidDecimalLiteralsInBigDecimalConstructor
 Design ruleset: NonThreadSafeSingleton, UncommentedEmptyMethod, UncommentedEmptyConstructor
 Controversial ruleset: DefaultPackage
 Naming ruleset: MisleadingVariableName
 Migration ruleset: ReplaceVectorWithList, ReplaceHashtableWithMap, ReplaceEnumerationWithIterator, AvoidEnumAsIdentifier, AvoidAssertAsIdentifier
 Strings ruleset: UseStringBufferLength
Fixed bug 1292745 - Removed unused source file ExceptionTypeChecking.java
Fixed bug 1292609 - The JDK 1.3 parser now correctly handles certain 'assert' usages.  Also added a 'JDK 1.3' menu item to the Designer.
Fixed bug 1292689 - Corrected description for UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn
Fixed bug 1293157 - UnusedPrivateMethod no longer reports false positives for private methods which are only invoked from static initializers.
Fixed bug 1293277 - Messages that used 'pluginname' had duplicated messages.
Fixed bug 1291353 - ASTMethodDeclaration isPublic/isAbstract methods always return true.  The syntactical modifier - i.e., whether or not 'public' was used in the source code in the method declaration - is available via 'isSyntacticallyPublic' and 'isSyntacticallyAbstract'
Fixed bug 1296544 - TooManyFields no longer checks the wrong property value.
Fixed bug 1304739 - StringInstantiation no longer crashes on certain String constructor usages.
Fixed bug 1306180 - AvoidConcatenatingNonLiteralsInStringBuffer no longer reports false positives on certain StringBuffer usages.
Fixed bug 1309235 - TooManyFields no longer includes static finals towards its count.
Fixed bug 1312720 - DefaultPackage no longer flags interface fields.
Fixed bug 1312754 - pmd.bat now handles command line arguments better in WinXP.
Fixed bug 1312723 - Added isSyntacticallyPublic() behavior to ASTFieldDeclaration nodes.
Fixed bug 1313216 - Designer was not displaying 'final' attribute for ASTLocalVariableDeclaration nodes.
Fixed bug 1314086 - Added logging-jakarta-commons as a short name for rulesets/logging-jakarta-commons.xml to SimpleRuleSetNameMapper.
Fixed bug 1351498 - Improved UnnecessaryCaseChange warning message.
Fixed bug 1351706 - CompareObjectsWithEquals now catches more cases.
Fixed bug 1277373 (and 1347286) - InefficientStringBuffering now flags fewer false positives.
Fixed bug 1363447 - MissingBreakInSwitch no longer reports false positives for switch statements where each switch label has a return statement.
Fixed bug 1363458 - MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass no longer reports cases where there are public static fields.
Fixed bug 1364816 - ImmutableField no longer reports false positives for fields assigned in an anonymous inner class in a constructor.
Implemented RFE 1311309 (and 1119854) - Suppressed RuleViolation counts are now included in the reports.
Implemented RFE 1220371 - Rule violation suppression via annotations.  Per the JLS, @SuppressWarnings can be placed before the following nodes: TYPE, FIELD, METHOD, PARAMETER, CONSTRUCTOR, LOCAL_VARIABLE.
Implemented RFE 1275547 - OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcode now skips Comparator implementations.
Applied patch 1306999 - Renamed CloseConnection to CloseResource and added support for checking Statement and ResultSet objects.
Applied patch 1344754 - EmptyCatchBlock now skips catch blocks that contain comments.  This is also requested in RFE 1347884.
Renamed AvoidConcatenatingNonLiteralsInStringBuffer to InefficientStringBuffering; new name is a bit more concise.
Modified LongVariable; now it has a property which can be used to override the minimum reporting value.
Improved CPD XML report.
CPD no longer skips header files when checking C/C++ code.
Reworked CPD command line arguments; old-style arguments will still work for one more version, though.
Lots of documentation improvements.

September 15, 2005 - 3.3:

New rules:
    Design: PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons,  UnnecessaryLocalBeforeReturn
    Logging-jakarta-commons: ProperLogger
    Basic: UselessOverridingMethod
    Naming: PackageCase, NoPackage
    Strings: UnnecessaryCaseChange
Implemented RFE 1220171 - rule definitions can now contain a link to an external URL for more information on that rule - for example, a link to the rule's web page.  Thanks to Wouter Zelle for designing and implementing this!
Implemented RFE 1230685 - The text report now includes parsing errors even if no rule violations are reported
Implemented RFE 787860 - UseSingleton now accounts for JUnit test suite declarations.
Implemented RFE 1097090 - The Report object now contains the elapsed time for running PMD.  This shows up in the XML report as an elapsedTime attribute in the pmd element in the format '2m 5s' or '1h 5h 35s' or '25s' .
Implemented RFE 1246338 - CPD now handles SCCS directories and NTFS junction points.
Fixed bug 1226858 - JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage now checks calls to assertFalse.
Fixed bug 1227001 - AvoidCallingFinalize no longer flags calls to finalize() within finalizers.
Fixed bug 1229755 - Fixed typo in ArrayIsStoredDirectly description.
Fixed bug 1229749 - Improved error message when an external rule is not found.
Fixed bug 1224849 - JUnitTestsShouldContainAsserts no longer skips method declarations which include explicit throws clauses.
Fixed bug 1225492 - ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod now reports the correct method name.  dvholten's examples in RFE 1235562 also helped with this a great deal.
Fixed bug 1228589 - DoubleCheckedLocking and ExceptionSignatureDeclaration no longer throw ClassCastExceptions on method declarations that declare generic return types.
Fixed bug 1235299 - NullAssignment no longer flags null equality comparisons in ternary expressions.
Fixed bug 1235300 - NullAssignment no longer flags assignments to final fields.
Fixed bug 1240201 - The UnnecessaryParentheses message is no longer restricted to return statements.
Fixed bug 1242290 - The JDK 1.5 parser no longer chokes on nested enumerations with a constructor.
Fixed bug 1242544 - SimplifyConditional no longer flags null checks that precede an instanceof involving an array dereference.
Fixed bug 1242946 - ArrayIsStoredDirectly no longer reports false positives for equality expression comparisons.  As a bonus, its message now includes the variable name :-)
Fixed bug 1232648 - MethodReturnsInternalArray no longer reports false positives on return statement expressions that involve method invocations on an internal array.
Fixed bug 1244428 - MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass no longer reports warnings for nested classes.  Some inner class cases will be missed, but false positives will be eliminated as well.
Fixed bug 1244443 - EqualsNull now catches more cases.
Fixed bug 1250949 - The JDK 1.5 parser no longer chokes on annotated parameters and annotated local variables.
Fixed bug 1245139 - TooManyFields no longer throws a ClassCastException when processing anonymous classes.
Fixed bug 1251256 - ImmutableField no longer skips assignments in try blocks on methods (which led to false positives).
Fixed bug 1250949 - The JDK 1.5 parser no longer chokes on AnnotationTypeMemberDeclaration with a default value.
Fixed bug 1245367 - ImmutableField no longer triggers on assignments in loops in constructors.
Fixed bug 1251269 - AvoidConcatenatingNonLiteralsInStringBuffer no longer triggers on StringBuffer constructors like 'new StringBuffer(1 + getFoo());'
Fixed bug 1244570 - AvoidConcatenatingNonLiteralsInStringBuffer no longer triggers on certain AST patterns involving local variable declarations inside Statement nodes.
Fixed bug 695344 - StringInstantiation no longer triggers on the String(byte[]) constructor.
Fixed bug 1114754 - UnusedPrivateMethod reports fewer false positives.
Fixed bug 1290718 - Command line parameter documentation is now correct for targetjdk options.
Applied patch 1228834 - XPath rules can now use properties to customize rules.  Thanks to Wouter Zelle for another great piece of work!
Fixed a bug in RuleSetFactory that missed some override cases; thx to Wouter Zelle for the report and a fix.
Fixed a bug in the grammar that didn't allow constructors to have type parameters, which couldn't parse some JDK 1.5 constructs.
Fixed a bug in ImportFromSamePackage; now it catches the case where a class has an on-demand import for the same package it is in.
Fixed a bug in CompareObjectsWithEquals; now it catches some local variable cases.
Fixed a bug in CouplingBetweenObjects; it no longer triggers an exception (which is a bug in the symbol table layer) by calling getEnclosingClassScope() when the node in question isn't enclosed by one.
Moved AvoidCallingFinalize from the design ruleset to the finalize ruleset and then deleted redundant ExplicitCallToFinalize rule from the finalize ruleset.
Deleted redundant ExceptionTypeChecking rule from the strictexception ruleset; use AvoidInstanceofChecksInCatchClause in the design ruleset instead.
Added some new XSLT scripts that create nifty HTML output; thanks to Wouter Zelle for the code.
Improved UseCorrectExceptionLogging; thx to Wouter Zelle for the new XPath.
Improved warning message from UnusedPrivateMethod.
Improved EmptyIfStmt; now it catches the case where an IfStatement is followed by an EmptyStatement node.
The Ant task now accepts the short names of rulesets (e.g., unusedcode for rulesets/unusedcode.xml).
Removed unnecessary '.html' suffix from displayed filenames when the linkPrefix attribute is used with the HTML renderer.
Added an optional 'description' attribute to the 'property' element in the ruleset XML files.
Added a simplified SimpleNode.addViolation() method to reduce duplicated rule violation creation code.
Moved from jaxen-1.0-fcs.jar/saxpath-1.0-fcs.jar to jaxen-1.1-beta-7.jar.  This yielded a 20% speed increase in the basic ruleset!

June 21, 2005 - 3.2:

New rules: UseCorrectExceptionLogging (logging-jakarta-commons ruleset), AvoidPrintStackTrace (logging-java ruleset), CompareObjectsWithEquals (design ruleset)
Fixed bug 1201577 - PMD now correctly parses method declarations that return generic types.
Fixed bug 1205709 - PMD no longer takes a long time to report certain parsing errors.
Fixed bug 1052356 - ImmutableField no longer triggers on fields which are assigned to in a constructor's try statement.
Fixed bug 1215854 - Package/class/method names are now filled in whenever possible, and the XML report includes all three.
Fixed bug 1209719 - MethodArgumentCouldBeFinal no longer triggers on arguments which are modified using postfix or prefix expressions.  A bug in AvoidReassigningParameters was also fixed under the same bug id.
Fixed bug 1188386 - MethodReturnsInternalArray no longer flags returning a local array declaration.
Fixed bug 1172137 - PMD no longer locks up when generating a control flow graph for if statements with labelled breaks.
Fixed bug 1221094 - JUnitTestsShouldContainAsserts no longer flags static methods.
Fixed bug 1217028 - pmd.bat now correctly passes parameters to PMD.
Implemented RFE 1188604 - AvoidThrowingCertainExceptionTypes has been split into AvoidThrowingRawExceptionTypes and AvoidThrowingNullPointerException.
Implemented RFE 1188369 - UnnecessaryBooleanAssertion now checks for things like 'assertTrue(!foo)'.  These should be changed to 'assertFalse(foo)' for clarity.
Implemented RFE 1199622 - UnusedFormalParameter now defaults to only checking private methods unless a 'checkall' property is set.
Implemented RFE 1220314 - the symbol table now includes some rudimentary type information.
Break and continue statement labels (if present) are placed in the image field.
Fixed bug which caused MissingSerialVersionUID to trigger on all interfaces that implemented other interfaces.
Modified NullAssignmentRule to catch null assignments in ternary expressions.
Added two new node types - ASTCatchStatement and ASTFinallyStatement.
Modified rule XML definition; it no longer includes a symboltable attribute since the symbol table layer is now run for all files analyzed.
Harden equality of AbstractRule and RuleSet objects (needed for the Eclipse plugin features)
Change RuleSet.getRuleByName. Now return null instead of throwing a RuntimeException when the rule is not found
Add .project and .classpath to the module so that it can be checkout as an Eclipse project

May 10, 2005 - 3.1:

New rules: SimplifyStartsWith, UnnecessaryParentheses, CollapsibleIfStatements, UseAssertEqualsInsteadOfAssertTrue,  UseAssertSameInsteadOfAssertTrue, UseStringBufferForStringAppends, SimplifyConditional, SingularField
Fixed bug 1170535 - LongVariable now report variables longer than 17 characters, not 12.
Fixed bug 1182755 - SystemPrintln no longer overreports problems.
Fixed bug 1188372 - AtLeastOneConstructor no longer fires on interfaces.
Fixed bug 1190508 - UnnecessaryBooleanAssertion no longer fires on nested boolean literals.
Fixed bug 1190461 - UnusedLocal no longer misses usages which are on the RHS of a right bit shift operator.
Fixed bug 1188371 - AvoidInstantiatingObjectsInLoops no longer fires on instantiations in loops when the 'new' keyword is preceded by a 'return' or a 'throw'.
Fixed bug 1190526 - TooManyFields now accepts a property setting correctly, and default lower bound is 15 vs 10.
Fixed bug 1196238 - UnusedImports no longer reports false positives for various JDK 1.5 java.lang subpackages.
Fixed bug 1169731 - UnusedImports no longer reports false positives on types used inside generics.  This bug also resulted in a bug in ForLoopShouldBeWhileLoop being fixed, thanks Wim!
Fixed bug 1187325 - UnusedImports no longer reports a false positive on imports which are used inside an Annotation.
Fixed bug 1189720 - PMD no longer fails to parse generics that use 'member selectors'.
Fixed bug 1170109 - The Ant task now supports an optional 'targetjdk' attribute that accepts values of '1.3', '1.4', or '1.5'.
Fixed bug 1183032 - The XMLRenderer no longer throws a SimpleDateFormat exception when run with JDK 1.3.
Fixed bug 1097256 - The XMLRenderer now supports optional encoding of UTF8 characters using the 'net.sourceforge.pmd.supportUTF8' environment variable.
Fixed bug 1198832 - AbstractClassWithoutAbstractMethod no longer flags classes which implement interfaces since these can partially implement the interface and thus don't need to explicitly declare abstract methods.
Implemented RFE 1193979 - BooleanInstantiation now catches cases like Boolean.valueOf(true)
Implemented RFE 1171095 - LabeledStatement nodes now contain the image of the label.
Implemented RFE 1176401 - UnusedFormalParameter now flags public methods.
Implemented RFE 994338 - The msg produced by ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod now includes the offending method name.
Modified command line parameters; removed -jdk15 and -jdk13 parameters and added a -'targetjdk [1.3|1.4|1.5]' parameter.
Modified CSVRenderer to include more columns.
Optimized rules: FinalFieldCouldBeStatic (115 seconds to 7 seconds), SuspiciousConstantFieldName (48 seconds to 14 seconds), UnusedModifer (49 seconds to 4 seconds)

March 23, 2005 - 3.0:

New rules: MissingSerialVersionUID, UnnecessaryFinalModifier, AbstractClassDoesNotContainAbstractMethod, MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass, AvoidSynchronizedAtMethodLevel, AvoidCallingFinalize, UseNotifyAllInsteadOfNotify, MissingBreakInSwitch, AvoidInstanceofChecksInCatchClause, AvoidFieldNameMatchingTypeName, AvoidFieldNameMatchingMethodName, AvoidNonConstructorMethodsWithClassName, TestClassWithoutTestCases, TooManyFields, CallSuperInConstructor, UnnecessaryBooleanAssertion, UseArrayListInsteadOfVector
Implemented RFE 1058039 - PMD's command line interface now accepts abbreviated names for the standard rulesets; for example 'java net.sourceforge.pmd.PMD /my/source/code/ text basic,unusedcode' would run the rulesets/basic.xml and the rulesets/unusedcode.xml rulesets on the source in /my/source/code and produce a text report.
Implemented RFE 1119851 - PMD's Ant task now supports an 'excludeMarker' attribute.
Fixed bug 994400 - False +: ConstructorCallsOverridableMethodRule, thanks to ereissner for reporting it
Fixed bug 1146116 - JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert no longer crashes on inner Interface
Fixed bug 1114625 - UnusedPrivateField no longer throws an NPE on standalone postfix expressions which are prefixed with 'this'.
Fixed bug 1114020 - The Ant task now reports a complete stack trace when run with the -verbose flag.
Fixed bug 1117983 - MethodArgumentCouldBeFinal no longer reports false positives on try..catch blocks.
Fixed bug 797742 - PMD now parses JDK 1.5 source code.  Note that it's not perfect yet; more testing/bug reports are welcome!
Fixed a bug - the StatisticalRule no longer 'merges' data points when using the 'topscore' property.
Fixed a bug - the PMD Ant task's failOnRuleViolation attribute no longer causes a BuildException in the case when no rule violations occur.
Modified the XSLT to add a summary section.
Added Ruby support to CPD.
Optimized various rules and wrote a benchmarking application; results are here - http://infoether.com/~tom/pmd_timing.txt

February 1, 2005 - 2.3:

Fixed bug 1113927 - ExceptionAsFlowControl no longer throws NPEs on code where a throw statement exists without a try statement wrapping it.
Fixed bug 1113981 - AvoidConcatenatingNonLiteralsInStringBuffer no longer throws NPEs on code where an append appears as a child of an ExplicitConstructorInvocation node.
Fixed bug 1114039 - AvoidInstantiatingObjectsInLoops's message no longer contains a spelling error.
Fixed bug 1114029 - The 'optimization' rules no longer throw NPEs at various points.
Fixed bug 1114251 - The 'sunsecure' rules no longer throw NPEs at various points.

January 31, 2005 - 2.2:

New rules: LocalVariableCouldBeFinal, MethodArgumentCouldBeFinal, AvoidInstantiatingObjectsInLoops, ArrayIsStoredDirectly, MethodReturnsInternalArray, AssignmentToNonFinalStatic, AvoidConcatenatingNonLiteralsInStringBuffer
Fixed bug 1088459 - JUnitTestsShouldContainAsserts no longer throws ClassCastException on interface, native, and abstract method declarations.
Fixed bug 1100059 - The Ant task now generates a small empty-ish report if there are no violations.
Implemented RFE 1086168 - PMD XML reports now contain a version and timestamp attribute in the <pmd> element.
Implemented RFE 1031950 - The PMD Ant task now supports nested ruleset tags
Fixed a bug in the rule override logic; it no longer requires the "class" attribute of a rule be listed in the overrides section.
Added 'ignoreLiterals' and 'ignoreIdentifiers' boolean options to the CPD task.
Cleaned up a good bit of the symbol table code; thanks much to Harald Gurres for the patch.
CPD now contains a generic copy/paste checker for programs in any language

December 15, 2004 - 2.1:

New rules: AvoidProtectedFieldInFinalClass, SystemPrintln
Fixed bug 1050173 - ImmutableFieldRule no longer reports false positives for static fields.
Fixed bug 1050286 - ImmutableFieldRule no longer reports false positives for classes which have multiple constructors only a subset of which set certain fields.
Fixed bug 1055346 - ImmutableFieldRule no longer reports false positive on preinc/predecrement/postfix expressions.
Fixed bug 1041739 - EmptyStatementNotInLoop no longer reports false positives for nested class declarations in methods.
Fixed bug 1039963 - CPD no longer fails to parse C++ files with multi-line macros.
Fixed bug 1053663 - SuspiciousConstantFieldName no longer reports false positives for interface members.
Fixed bug 1055930 - CouplingBetweenObjectsRule no longer throws a NPE on interfaces
Fixed a possible NPE in dfa.report.ReportTree.
Implemented RFE 1058033 - Renamed run.[sh|bat] to pmd.[sh|bat].
Implemented RFE 1058042 - XML output is more readable now.
Applied patch 1051956 - Rulesets that reference rules using "ref" can now override various properties.
Applied patch 1070733 - CPD's Java checker now has an option to ignore both literals and identifiers - this can help find large duplicate code blocks, but can also result in false positives.
YAHTMLRenderer no longer has dependence on Ant packages.
Modified the AST to correctly include PostfixExpression nodes.  Previously a statement like "x++;" was embedded in the parent StatementExpression node.
Moved BooleanInstantiation from the design ruleset to the basic ruleset.
Updated Xerces libraries to v2.6.2.
Many rule names had the word "Rule" tacked on to the end.  Various folks thought this was a bad idea, so here are the new names of those rules which were renamed:
- basic.xml: UnnecessaryConversionTemporary, OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcode, DoubleCheckedLocking
- braces.xml: WhileLoopsMustUseBraces, IfElseStmtsMustUseBraces, ForLoopsMustUseBraces
- clone.xml: ProperCloneImplementation
- codesize.xml: CyclomaticComplexity, ExcessivePublicCount
- controversial.xml: UnnecessaryConstructor, AssignmentInOperand, DontImportSun, SuspiciousOctalEscape
- coupling.xml: CouplingBetweenObjects, ExcessiveImports, LooseCoupling
- design.xml: UseSingleton, SimplifyBooleanReturns, AvoidReassigningParameters, ConstructorCallsOverridableMethod, AccessorClassGeneration, CloseConnection, OptimizableToArrayCall, IdempotentOperations. ImmutableField
- junit.xml: JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessage, JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert
- logging-java.xml: MoreThanOneLogger, LoggerIsNotStaticFinal
- naming.xml: ShortMethodName, VariableNamingConventions, ClassNamingConventions, AbstractNaming
- strictexception.xml: ExceptionAsFlowControl, AvoidCatchingNPE, AvoidThrowingCertainExceptionTypes
Continued working on JDK 1.5 compatibility - added support for static import statements, varargs, and the new for loop syntax
- still TODO: generics and annotations (note that autoboxing shouldn't require a grammar change)
- Good article on features: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/releases/j2se15/

October 19, 2004 - 2.0:

New rules: InstantiationToGetClass, IdempotentOperationsRule, SuspiciousEqualsMethodName, SimpleDateFormatNeedsLocale, JUnitTestsShouldContainAssertsRule, SuspiciousConstantFieldName, ImmutableFieldRule, MoreThanOneLoggerRule, LoggerIsNotStaticFinalRule, UseLocaleWithCaseConversions
Applied patch in RFE 992576 - Enhancements to VariableNamingConventionsRule
Implemented RFE 995910 - The HTML report can now include links to HTMLlized source code - for example, the HTML generated by JXR.
Implemented RFE 665824 - PMD now ignores rule violations in lines containing the string 'NOPMD'.
Fixed bug in SimplifyBooleanExpressions - now it catches more cases.
Fixed bugs in AvoidDuplicateLiterals - now it ignores small duplicate literals, its message is more helpful, and it catches more cases.
Fixed bug 997893 - UnusedPrivateField now detects assignments to members of private fields as a usage.
Fixed bug 1020199 - UnusedLocalVariable no longer flags arrays as unused if an assignment is made to an array slot.
Fixed bug 1027133 - Now ExceptionSignatureDeclaration skips certain JUnit framework methods.
Fixed bug 1008548 - The 'favorites' ruleset no longer contains a broken reference.
Fixed bug 1045583 - UnusedModifier now correctly handles anonymous inner classes within interface field declarations.
Partially fixed bug 998122 - CloseConnectionRule now checks for imports of java.sql before reporting a rule violation.
Applied patch 1001694 - Now PMD can process zip/jar files of source code.
Applied patch 1032927 - The XML report now includes the rule priority.
Added data flow analysis facade from Raik Schroeder.
Added two new optional attributes to rule definitions - symboltable and dfa.  These allow the symbol table and DFA facades to be configured on a rule-by-rule basis.  Note that if your rule needs the symbol table; you'll need to add symboltable="true" to your rule definition.  FWIW, this also results in about a 5% speedup for rules that don't need either layer.
Added a "logging" ruleset - thanks to Miguel Griffa for the code!
Enhanced the ASTViewer - and renamed it 'Designer' - to display data flows.
Moved development environment to Maven 1.0.
Moved development environment to Ant 1.6.2.  This is nice because using the new JUnit task attribute "forkmode='perBatch'" cuts test runtime from 90 seconds to 7 seconds.  Sweet.
MethodWithSameNameAsEnclosingClass now reports a more helpful line number.

July 14, 2004 - 1.9:

New rules: CloneMethodMustImplementCloneable, CloneThrowsCloneNotSupportedException, EqualsNull, ConfusingTernary
Created new "clone" ruleset and moved ProperCloneImplementationRule over from the design ruleset.
Moved LooseCoupling from design.xml to coupling.xml.
Some minor performance optimizations - removed some unnecessary casts from the grammar, simplified some XPath rules.
Postfix expressions (i.e., x++) are now available in the grammar.  To access them, search for StatementExpressions with an image of "++" or "--" - i.e., in XPath, //StatementExpression[@Image="++"].  This is an odd hack and hopefully will get cleared up later.
Ant task and CLI now used BufferedInputStreams.
Converted AtLeastOneConstructor rule from Java code to XPath.
Implemented RFE 743460: The XML report now contains the ruleset name.
Implemented RFE 958714: Private field and local variables that are assigned but not used are now flagged as unused.
Fixed bug 962782 - BeanMembersShouldSerializeRule no longer reports set/is as being a violation.
Fixed bug 977022 - UnusedModifier no longer reports false positives for modifiers of nested classes in interfaces
Fixed bug 976643 - IfElseStmtsMustUseBracesRule no longer reports false positives for certain if..else constructs.
Fixed bug 985961 - UseSingletonRule now fires on classes which contain static fields
Fixed bug 977031 - FinalizeDoesNotCallSuperFinalize no longer reports a false positive when a finalizer contains a call to super.finalize in a try {} finally {} block.

May 19, 2004 - 1.8:

New rules: ExceptionAsFlowControlRule, BadComparisonRule, AvoidThrowingCertainExceptionTypesRule, AvoidCatchingNPERule, OptimizableToArrayCallRule
Major grammar changes - lots of new node types added, many superfluous nodes removed from the runtime AST.  Bug 786611 - http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=786611&group_id=56262&atid=479921 - explains it a bit more.
Fixed bug 786611 - Expressions are no longer over-expanded in the AST
Fixed bug 874284 - The AST now contains tokens for bitwise or expressions - i.e., "|"

April 22, 2004 - 1.7:

Moved development environment to Maven 1.0-RC2.
Fixed bug 925840 - Messages were no longer getting variable names plugged in correctly
Fixed bug 919308 - XMLRenderer was still messed up; 'twas missing a quotation mark.
Fixed bug 923410 - PMD now uses the default platform character set encoding; optionally, you can pass in a character encoding to use.
Implemented RFE 925839 - Added some more detail to the UseSingletonRule.
Added an optional 'failuresPropertyName' attribute to the Ant task.
Refactored away duplicate copies of XPath rule definitions in regress/, yay!
Removed manifest from jar file; it was only there for the Main-class attribute, and it's not very useful now since PMD has several dependencies.
Began working on JDK 1.5 compatibility - added support for EnumDeclaration nodes.

March 15, 2004 - 1.6:

Fixed bug 895661 - XML reports containing error elements no longer have malformed XML.
Fixed a bug in UnconditionalIfStatement - it no longer flags things like "if (x==true)".
Applied Steve Hawkins' improvements to CPD:
- Various optimizations; now it runs about 4 times faster!
- fixed "single match per file" bug
- tweaked source code slicing
- CSV renderer
Added two new renderers - SummaryHTMLRenderer and PapariTextRenderer.
Moved development environment to Ant 1.6 and JavaCC 3.2.

February 2, 2004 - 1.5:

New rules: DontImportSunRule, EmptyFinalizer, EmptyStaticInitializer, AvoidDollarSigns, FinalizeOnlyCallsSuperFinalize, FinalizeOverloaded, FinalizeDoesNotCallSuperFinalize, MethodWithSameNameAsEnclosingClass, ExplicitCallToFinalize, NonStaticInitializer, DefaultLabelNotLastInSwitchStmt, NonCaseLabelInSwitchStatement, SuspiciousHashcodeMethodName, EmptyStatementNotInLoop, SuspiciousOctalEscapeRule
FinalizeShouldBeProtected moved from design.xml to finalizers.xml.
Added isTrue() to ASTBooleanLiteral.
Added UnaryExpression to the AST.
Added isPackagePrivate() to AccessNode.

January 7, 2004 - 1.4:

New rules: AbstractNamingRule, ProperCloneImplementationRule
Fixed bug 840926 - AvoidReassigningParametersRule no longer reports a false positive when assigning a value to an array slot when the array is passed as a parameter to a method
Fixed bug 760520 - RuleSetFactory is less strict about whitespace in ruleset.xml files.
Fixed bug 826805 - JumbledIncrementorRule no longer reports a false positive when a outer loop incrementor is used as an array index
Fixed bug 845343 - AvoidDuplicateLiterals now picks up cases when a duplicate literal appears in field declarations.
Fixed bug 853409 - VariableNamingConventionsRule no longer requires that non-static final fields be capitalized
Fixed a bug in OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcodeRule; it no longer reports a false positive when equals() is passed the fully qualified name of Object.
Implemented RFE 845348 - UnnecessaryReturn yields more useful line numbers now
Added a ruleset DTD and a ruleset XML Schema.
Added 'ExplicitExtends' and 'ExplicitImplements' attributes to UnmodifiedClassDeclaration nodes.

October 23, 2003 - 1.3:

Relicensed under a BSD-style license.
Fixed bug 822245 - VariableNamingConventionsRule now handles interface fields correctly.
Added new rules: EmptySynchronizedBlock, UnnecessaryReturn
ASTType now has an getDimensions() method.

October 06, 2003 - 1.2.2:

Added new rule: CloseConnectionRule
Fixed bug 782246 - FinalFieldCouldBeStatic no longer flags fields in interfaces.
Fixed bug 782235 - "ant -version" now prints more details when a file errors out.
Fixed bug 779874 - LooseCouplingRule no longer triggers on ArrayList
Fixed bug 781393 - VariableNameDeclaration no longer throws ClassCastExpression since ASTLocalVariableDeclaration now subclasses AccessNode
Fixed bug 797243 - CPD XML report can no longer contain ]]> (CDEnd)
Fixed bug 690196 - PMD now handles both JDK 1.3 and 1.4 code - i.e., usage of "assert" as an identifier.
Fixed bug 805092 - VariableNamingConventionsRule no longer flags serialVersionUID as a violation
Fixed bug - Specifying a non-existing rule format on the command line no longer results in a ClassNotFoundException.
XPath rules may now include pluggable parameters.  This feature is very limited.  For now.
Tweaked CPD time display field
Made CPD text fields uneditable
Added more error checking to CPD GUI input
Added "dialog cancelled" check to CPD "Save" function
Added Boris Gruschko's AST viewer.
Added Jeff Epstein's TextPad integration.
ASTType now has an isArray() method.

August 1, 2003 - 1.2.1:

Fixed bug 781077 - line number "-1" no longer appears for nodes with siblings.

July 30, 2003 - 1.2:

Added new rules: VariableNamingConventionsRule, MethodNamingConventionsRule, ClassNamingConventionsRule, AvoidCatchingThrowable, ExceptionSignatureDeclaration, ExceptionTypeChecking, BooleanInstantiation
Fixed bug 583047 - ASTName column numbers are now correct
Fixed bug 761048 - Symbol table now creates a scope level for anonymous inner classes
Fixed bug 763529 - AccessorClassGenerationRule no longer crashes when given a final inner class
Fixed bug 771943 - AtLeastOneConstructorRule and UnnecessaryConstructorRule no longer reports false positives on inner classes.
Applied patch from Chris Webster to fix another UnnecessaryConstructorRule problem.
Added ability to accept a comma-delimited string of files and directories on the command line.
Added a CSVRenderer.
Added a "-shortfilenames" argument to the PMD command line interface.
Modified grammer to provide information on whether an initializer block is static.
ASTViewer now shows node images and modifiers
ASTViewer now saves last edited text to ~/.pmd_astviewer
Moved the PMD Swing UI into a separate module - pmd-swingui.
Updated license.txt to point to new location.

June 19, 2003 - 1.1:

Added new rules: FinalizeShouldBeProtected, FinalFieldCouldBeStatic, BeanMembersShouldSerializeRule
Removed "verbose" attribute from PMD and CPD Ant tasks; now they use built in logging so you can do a "ant -verbose cpd" or "ant -verbose pmd".  Thanks to Philippe T'Seyen for the code.
Added "excludes" feature to rulesets; thanks to Gael Marziou for the suggestion.
Removed "LinkedList" from LooseCouplingRule checks; thx to Randall Schulz for the suggestion.
CPD now processes PHP code.
Added VBHTMLRenderer; thanks to Vladimir Bossicard for the code.
Added "Save" item to CPD GUI; thanks to mcclain looney for the patch.
Fixed bug 732592 - Ant task now accepts a nested classpath element.
Fixed bug 744915 - UseSingletonRule no longer fires on abstract classes, thanks to Pablo Casado for the bug report.
Fixed bugs 735396 and 735399 - false positives from ConstructorCallsOverridableMethodRule
Fixed bug 752809 - UnusedPrivateMethodRule now catches unused private static methods, thanks to Conrad Roche for the bug report.

April 17, 2003 - 1.05:

Added new rules: ReturnFromFinallyBlock, SimplifyBooleanExpressions
Added a new Ant task for CPD; thanks to Andy Glover for the code.
Added ability to specify a class name as a renderer on the command line or in the formatter "type" attribute of the Ant task.
Brian Ewins completely rewrote CPD using a portion of the Burrows-Wheeler Transform - it's much, much, much faster now.
Rebuilt parser with JavaCC 3.0; made several parser optimizations.
The Ant task now accepts a <classpath> element to aid in loading custom rulesets.  Thanks to Luke Francl for the suggestion.
Fixed several bugs in UnnecessaryConstructorRule; thanks to Adam Nemeth for the reports and fixes.
All test-data classes have been inlined into their respective JUnit tests.

March 21, 2003 - 1.04

Added new rules: ConstructorCallsOverridableMethodRule, AtLeastOneConstructorRule, JUnitAssertionsShouldIncludeMessageRule, DoubleCheckedLockingRule, ExcessivePublicCountRule, AccessorClassGenerationRule
The Ant task has been updated; if you set "verbose=true" full stacktraces are printed.  Thx to Paul Roebuck for the suggestion.
Moved JUnit rules into their own package - "net.sourceforge.pmd.rules.junit".
Incorporated new ResourceLoader; thanks to Dave Fuller
Incorporated new XPath-based rule definitions; thanks to Dan Sheppard for the excellent work.
Fixed bug 697187 - Problem with nested ifs
Fixed bug 699287 - Grammar bug; good catch by David Whitmore

February 11, 2003 - 1.03

Added new rules: CyclomaticComplexityRule, AssignmentInOperandRule
Added numbering to the HTMLRenderer; thx to Luke Francl for the code.
Added an optional Ant task attribute 'failOnRuleViolation'.  This stops the build if any rule violations are found.
Added an XSLT script for processing the PMD XML report; thx to Mats for the code.
The Ant task now determines whether the formatter toFile attribute is absolute or relative and routes the report appropriately.
Moved several rules into a new "controversial" ruleset.
Fixed bug 672742 - grammar typo was hosing up ASTConstructorDeclaration which was hosing up UseSingletonRule
Fixed bug 674393 - OnlyOneReturn rule no longer counts returns that are inside anonymous inner classes as being inside the containing method.  Thx to C. Lamont Gilbert for the bug report.
Fixed bug 674420 - AvoidReassigningParametersRule no longer counts parameter field reassignment as a violation.  Thx to C. Lamont Gilbert for the bug report.
Fixed bug 673662 - The Ant task's "failOnError" attribute works again.  Changed the semantics of this attribute, though, so it fails the build if errors occurred.  A new attribute 'failOnRuleViolation' serves the purpose of stopping the build if rule violations are found.
Fixed bug 676340 - Symbol table now creates new scope level when it encounters a switch statement.  See the bug for code details; generally, this bug would have triggered runtime exceptions on certain blocks of code.
Fixed bug 683465 - JavaCC parser no longer has ability to throw java.lang.Error; now it only throws java.lang.RuntimeExceptions.  Thx to Gunnlaugur Thor Briem for a good discussion on this topic.
Fixed bug in OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcodeRule - it no longer bails out with a NullPtrException on interfaces that declare a method signature "equals(Object)".  Thx to Don Leckie for catching that.

January 22, 2003 - 1.02:

Added new rules: ImportFromSamePackageRule, SwitchDensityRule, NullAssignmentRule, UnusedModifierRule, ForLoopShouldBeWhileLoopRule
Updated LooseCouplingRule to check for usage of Vector; thx to Vladimir for the good catch.
Updated AvoidDuplicateLiteralsRule to report the line number of the first occurrence of the duplicate String.
Modified Ant task to use a formatter element; this lets you render a report in several formats without having to rerun PMD.
Added a new Ant task attribute - shortFilenames.
Modified Ant task to ignore whitespace in the ruleset attribute
Added rule priority settings.
Added alternate row colorization to HTML renderer.
Fixed bug 650623 - the Ant task now uses relative directories for the report file
Fixed bug 656944 - PMD no longer prints errors to System.out, instead it just rethrows any exceptions
Fixed bug 660069 - this was a symbol table bug; thanks to mcclain looney for the report.
Fixed bug 668119 - OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcodeRule now checks the signature on equals(); thanks to mcclain looney for the report.

November 07 2002 - 1.01:

Fixed bug 633879: EmptyFinallyBlockRule now handles multiple catch blocks followed by a finally block.
Fixed bug 633892: StringToStringRule false positive exposed problem in symbol table usage to declaration code.
Fixed bug 617971: Statistical rules no longer produce tons of false positives due to accumulated results.
Fixed bug 633209: OnlyOneReturn rule no longer requires the return stmt to be the last statement.
Enhanced EmptyCatchBlockRule to flag multiple consecutive empty catch blocks.
Renamed AvoidStringLiteralsRule to AvoidDuplicateLiteralsRule.
Modified Ant task to truncate file paths to make the HTML output neater.

November 04 2002 - 1.0:

Added new rules: StringToStringRule, AvoidReassigningParametersRule, UnnecessaryConstructorRule, AvoidStringLiteralsRule
Fixed bug 631010: AvoidDeeplyNestedIfStmtsRule works correctly with if..else stmts now
Fixed bug 631605: OnlyOneReturn handles line spillover now.
Moved AvoidDeeplyNestedIfStmts from the braces ruleset to the design ruleset.
Moved several rules from the design ruleset to the codesize ruleset.
Added a new "favorites" ruleset.

October 04 2002 - 1.0rc3:

Added new rules: OnlyOneReturnRule, JumbledIncrementerRule, AvoidDeeplyNestedIfStmtsRule
PMD is now built and tested with JUnit 3.8.1 and Ant 1.5.
Added support for IntelliJ's IDEAJ.
Fixed bug 610018 - StringInstantiationRule now allows for String(byte[], int, int) usage.
Fixed bug 610693 - UnusedPrivateInstanceVariable handles parameter shadowing better.
Fixed bug 616535 - Command line interface input checking is better now.
Fixed bug 616615 - Command line interface allows the text renderer to be used now
Fixed a bug - the statistics rules now handle interfaces better.

September 12 2002 - 1.0rc2:

Added new rules: JUnitSpellingRule, JUnitStaticSuiteRule, StringInstantiationRule
Added new rulesets - junit, strings.
Added a printToConsole attribute to the Ant task so that you can see the report right there in the Ant output.
Fixed bug in PMD GUI - rules are now saved correctly.
Fixed bug 597916 - CPD line counts are accurate now.

September 09 2002 - 1.0rc1:

Added new rules: UnusedImportsRule, EmptySwitchStmtRule, SwitchStmtsShouldHaveDefaultRule, IfStmtsMustUseBracesRule
Fixed bug 597813 - Rule properties are now parsed correctly
Fixed bug 597905 - UseSingletonRule now resets its state correctly
Moved several rules into a new ruleset - braces.
Improved CPD by removing import statements and package statements from the token set.
Added Metrics API to the Report.
Updated PMD GUI.

August 16 2002 - 0.9:

Added new rules: LongParameterListRule, SimplifyBooleanReturnsRule
Enhanced statistics rules to support various ways of triggering rule violations
Added rule customization via XML parameters
Enhanced CopyAndPasteDetector; added a GUI
Fixed bug 592060 - UnusedPrivateInstanceVariable handles explicitly referenced statics correctly
Fixed bug 593849 - UnusedPrivateInstanceVariable handles nested classes better

July 30 2002 - 0.8:

Added new rule: UnusedFormalParameterRule
Fixed bug 588083 - ForLoopsNeedBraces rule correctly handles a variety of for statement formats
Added prototype of the copy and paste detector

July 25 2002 - 0.7:

Added new rules: UnusedPrivateMethodRule, WhileLoopsMustUseBracesRule, ForLoopsMustUseBracesRule, LooseCouplingRule
Fixed bug 583482 - EmptyCatchBlock and EmptyFinallyBlock no longer report an incorrect line number.

July 18 2002 - 0.6:

Added new rules: ExcessiveClassLength, ExcessiveMethodLength
DuplicateImportsRule now reports the correct line number.
Fixed bug 582639 - Rule violations are now reported on the proper line
Fixed bug 582509 - Removed unneeded throws clause
Fixed bug 583009 - Now rulesets.properties is in the jar file

July 15 2002 - 0.5:

Added new rules: DontImportJavaLangRule, DuplicateImportsRule
Added new ruleset: rulesets/imports.xml
Changed sorting of RuleViolations to group Files together.
Changed XML Renderer to improved format.
Created DVSL Stylesheet for the new format.
Moved the Cougaar rules out of the PMD core.
Fixed bug 580093 - OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcodeRule reports a more correct line number.
Fixed bug 581853 - UnusedLocalVariableRule now handles anonymous inner classes correctly.
Fixed bug 580278 - this was a side effect of bug 581853.
Fixed bug 580123 - UnusedPrivateInstanceVariable now checks for instance variable usage in inner classes.

July 10 2002 - 0.4:

Added new rules: OverrideBothEqualsAndHashcodeRule, EmptyTryBlock, EmptyFinallyBlock
Reports are now sorted by line number
RuleSets can now reference rules in other RuleSets
Fixed bug 579718 - made 'ruleset not found' error message clearer.

July 03 2002 - 0.3:

Added new rules: UseSingletonRule, ShortVariableRule, LongVariableRule, ShortMethodNameRule
Moved rules into RuleSets which are defined in XML files in the ruleset directory
Ant task:
-Added a 'failonerror' attribute
-Changed 'rulesettype' to 'rulesetfiles'
-Removed 'text' report format; only 'html' and 'xml' are available now

June 27 2002 - 0.2:

Added new rules: IfElseStmtsMustUseBracesRule, EmptyWhileStmtRule
Modified command line interface to accept a rule set
Fixed bug in EmptyCatchBlockRule
Fixed typo in UnnecessaryConversionTemporaryRule
Moved Ant task to the net.sourceforge.pmd.ant package
Added new HTML report format

June 25 2002 - 0.1:

Initial release