26-July-2024 - 7.4.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 7.4.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

• 🌟 New and changed rules
  • New Rules
  • Changed rules
  • Renamed rules
• 🐛 Fixed Issues
• 🚨 API Changes
• ✨ External Contributions
• 📈 Stats

🌟 New and changed rules

New Rules

• The new Apex rule AvoidNonRestrictiveQueries finds SOQL and SOSL queries without a where
  or limit statement. This can quickly cause governor limit exceptions.

Changed rules

• ClassNamingConventions (Apex Codestyle): Two new properties to configure different patterns
  for inner classes and interfaces: innerClassPattern and innerInterfacePattern.

Renamed rules

• InaccurateNumericLiteral (JavaScript Error Prone) has been renamed from InnaccurateNumericLiteral.
  The old rule name still works but is deprecated.

🐛 Fixed Issues

• apex
  • #5094: [apex] "No adapter exists for type" error message printed to stdout instead of stderr
• apex-bestpractices
  • #5095: [apex] ApexUnitTestShouldNotUseSeeAllDataTrue false negative due to casing (regression in PMD 7)
• apex-codestyle
  • #4800: [apex] ClassNamingConvention: Support naming convention for inner classes
• apex-performance
  • #635: [apex] New Rule: Avoid soql/sosl queries without a where clause or limit statement
• java-bestpractices
  • #5106: [java] AccessorClassGeneration: Node was null for default constructor
  • #5110: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod for method referenced by lombok.Builder.ObtainVia
  • #5117: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod for methods annotated with jakarta.annotation.PostConstruct or PreDestroy
• java-errorprone
  • #1488: [java] MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass: False positive with Lombok Builder on Constructor
• javascript-errorprone
  • #2367: [javascript] InnaccurateNumericLiteral is misspelled
  • #4716: [javascript] InaccurateNumericLiteral with number 259200000
• plsql
  • #5086: [plsql] Fixed issue with missing optional table alias in MERGE usage
  • #5087: [plsql] Add support for SQL_MACRO
  • #5088: [plsql] Add support for 'DEFAULT' clause on the arguments of some oracle functions
  • #5133: [plsql] AssertionError: Root of the tree should implement RootNode for a PL/SQL type declaration
• cli
  • #5120: [cli] Can't start designer under Windows
• core
  • #5091: [core] PMD CPD v7.3.0 gives deprecation warning for skipLexicalErrors even when not used

🚨 API Changes

• javascript
  • The old rule name InnaccurateNumericLiteral has been deprecated. Use the new name
    InaccurateNumericLiteral instead.

✨ External Contributions

• #5048: [apex] Added Inner Classes to Apex Class Naming Conventions Rule - Justin Stroud (@justinstroudbah / @sgnl-labs)
• #5086: [plsql] Fixed issue with missing optional table alias in MERGE usage - Arjen Duursma (@duursma)
• #5087: [plsql] Add support for SQL_MACRO - Arjen Duursma (@duursma)
• #5088: [plsql] Add support for 'DEFAULT' clause on the arguments of some oracle functions - Arjen Duursma (@duursma)
• #5107: [doc] Update maven.md - Typo fixed for maven target - karthikaiyasamy (@karthikaiyasamy)
• #5109: [java] Exclude constructor with lombok.Builder for MissingStaticMethodInNonInstantiatableClass - Krzysztof Debski (@kdebski85)
• #5111: [java] Fix UnusedPrivateMethod for @lombok.Builder.ObtainVia - Krzysztof Debski (@kdebski85)
• #5118: [java] FP for UnusedPrivateMethod with Jakarta @PostConstruct/PreDestroy annotations - Krzysztof Debski (@kdebski85)
• #5121: [plsql] Fixed issue with missing optional table alias in MERGE usage - Arjen Duursma (@duursma)

📈 Stats

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

28-June-2024 - 7.3.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 7.3.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

• 🚀 New and noteworthy
  • ✨ New Rules
  • 💥 pmd-compat6 removed (breaking)
• 🐛 Fixed Issues
• 🚨 API Changes
  • CPD Report Format XML
  • CLI
  • Ant
  • Deprecated API
  • Breaking changes: pmd-compat6 removed
• 📈 Stats

🚀 New and noteworthy

✨ New Rules

• The new Java rule UseEnumCollections reports usages for HashSet and HashMap
  when the keys are of an enum type. The specialized enum collections are more space- and time-efficient.

💥 pmd-compat6 removed (breaking)

The already deprecated PMD 6 compatibility module (pmd-compat6) has been removed. It was intended to be used with
older versions of the maven-pmd-plugin, but since maven-pmd-plugin 3.22.0, PMD 7 is supported directly and this
module is not needed anymore.

If you currently use this dependency (net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-compat6), remove it and upgrade maven-pmd-plugin
to the latest version (3.23.0 or newer).

See also Maven PMD Plugin.

🐛 Fixed Issues

• cli
  • #2827: [cli] Consider processing errors in exit status
• core
  • #4396: [core] CPD is always case sensitive
  • #4992: [core] CPD: Include processing errors in XML report
  • #5066: [core] CPD throws java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space (since 7.1.0)
• apex
  • #4922: [apex] SOQL syntax error with TYPEOF in sub-query
  • #5053: [apex] CPD fails to parse string literals with escaped characters
  • #5055: [apex] SOSL syntax error with WITH USER_MODE or WITH SYSTEM_MODE
• apex-bestpractices
  • #5000: [apex] UnusedLocalVariable FP with binds in SOSL / SOQL
• java
  • #4885: [java] AssertionError: Method should be accessible
  • #5050: [java] Problems with pattern variables in switch branches
• java-bestpractices
  • #577: [java] New Rule: Check that Map<K,V> is an EnumMap if K is an enum value
  • #5047: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod FP for Generics & Overloads
• plsql
  • #1934: [plsql] ParseException with MERGE statement in anonymous block
  • #2779: [plsql] Error while parsing statement with (Oracle) DML Error Logging
  • #4270: [plsql] Parsing exception COMPOUND TRIGGER with EXCEPTION handler

🚨 API Changes

CPD Report Format XML

There are some important changes:

1. The XML format will now use an XSD schema, that is available at https://pmd.github.io/schema/cpd-report_1_0_0.xsd.
   This schema defines the valid elements and attributes that one can expect from a CPD report.
2. The root element pmd-cpd contains the new attributes pmdVersion, timestamp and version. The latter is
   the schema version and is currently "1.0.0".
3. The CPD XML report will now also contain recoverable errors as additional <error> elements.

See Report formats for CPD for an example.

The XML format should be compatible as only attributes and elements have been added. However, if you parse
the document with a namespace aware parser, you might encounter some issues like no elements being found.
In case the new format doesn't work for you (e.g. namespaces, unexpected error elements), you can
go back using the old format with the renderer "xmlold" (XMLOldRenderer). Note, that
this old renderer is deprecated and only there for compatibility reasons. Whatever tooling is used to
read the XML format should be updated.

CLI

• New exit code 5 introduced. PMD and CPD will exit now by default with exit code 5, if any recoverable error
  (e.g. parsing exception, lexing exception or rule exception) occurred. PMD will still create a report with
  all detected violations or duplications if recoverable errors occurred. Such errors mean, that the report
  might be incomplete, as either violations or duplications for an entire file or for a specific rule are missing.
  These cases can be considered as false-negatives.

  In any case, the root cause should be investigated. If it's a problem in PMD itself, please create a bug report.

• New CLI parameter --no-fail-on-error to ignore such errors and not exit with code 5. By default,
  a build with errors will now fail and with that parameter, the previous behavior can be restored.
  This parameter is available for both PMD and CPD.

• The CLI parameter --skip-lexical-errors is deprecated. By default, lexical errors are skipped but the
  build is failed. Use the new parameter --[no-]fail-on-error instead to control whether to fail the build or not.

Ant

• CPDTask has a new parameter failOnError. It controls, whether to fail the build if any recoverable error occurred.
  By default, the build will fail. CPD will still create a report with all detected duplications, but the report might
  be incomplete.
• The parameter skipLexicalError in CPDTask is deprecated and ignored. Lexical errors are now always skipped.
  Use the new parameter failOnError instead to control whether to fail the build or not.

Deprecated API

• pmd-ant
  • CPDTask#setSkipLexicalErrors: Use setFailOnError
    instead to control, whether to ignore errors or fail the build.
• pmd-core
  • CPDConfiguration#isSkipLexicalErrors and setSkipLexicalErrors:
    Use setFailOnError to control whether to ignore errors or fail the build.
  • net.sourceforge.pmd.cpd.XMLOldRenderer (the CPD format "xmlold").
  • The constructor
    AntlrToken#AntlrToken
    shouldn't be used directly. Use AntlrTokenManager instead.
• pmd-java
  • ASTResource#getStableName and the corresponding attribute @StableName.
  • ASTRecordPattern#getVarId This method was added here by mistake. Record
    patterns don't declare a pattern variable for the whole pattern, but rather for individual record
    components, which can be accessed via getComponentPatterns.
• pmd-plsql
  • PLSQLParserImpl is deprecated now. It should have been package-private
    because this is an implementation class that should not be used directly.
  • The node ASTKEYWORD_UNRESERVED is deprecated and is now removed from the AST.

Breaking changes: pmd-compat6 removed

The already deprecated PMD 6 compatibility module (pmd-compat6) has been removed.
See above for details.

📈 Stats

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

31-May-2024 - 7.2.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 7.2.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

• 🚀 New and noteworthy
  • Collections exposed as XPath attributes
  • Updated PMD Designer
• 🐛 Fixed Issues
• 🚨 API Changes
  • Deprecated API
• ✨ External Contributions
• 📈 Stats

🚀 New and noteworthy

Collections exposed as XPath attributes

Up to now, all AST node getters would be exposed to XPath, as long as the return type was a primitive (boxed or unboxed), String or Enum. That meant that collections, even of these basic types, were not exposed, so for instance accessing Apex's ASTUserClass.getInterfaceNames() to list the interfaces implemented by a class was impossible from XPath, and would require writing a Java rule to check it.

Since this release, PMD will also expose any getter returning a collection of any supported type as a sequence through an XPath attribute. They would require to use apropriate XQuery functions to manipulate the sequence. So for instance, to detect any given ASTUserClass in Apex that implements Queueable, it is now possible to write:

/UserClass[@InterfaceNames = 'Queueable']

Updated PMD Designer

This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer.
For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog (7.2.0).

🐛 Fixed Issues

• core
  • #4467: [core] Expose collections from getters as XPath sequence attributes
  • #4978: [core] Referenced Rulesets do not emit details on validation errors
  • #4983: [cpd] Fix CPD crashes about unicode escapes
  • #5009: [core] Kotest tests aren't picked up by surefire
• java
  • #4912: [java] Unable to parse some Java9 resource references
  • #4973: [java] Stop parsing Java for CPD
  • #4980: [java] Bad intersection, unrelated class types java.lang.Object[] and java.lang.Number
  • #4988: [java] Fix impl of ASTVariableId::isResourceDeclaration / VariableId/@ResourceDeclaration
  • #4990: [java] Add an attribute @PackageQualifier to ASTClassType
  • #5006: [java] Bad intersection, unrelated class types Child and Parent<? extends Child>
  • #5029: [java] PMD 7.x throws stack overflow in TypeOps$ProjectionVisitor while parsing a Java class
• java-bestpractices
  • #4278: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod FP with Junit 5 @MethodSource and default factory method name
  • #4852: [java] ReplaceVectorWithList false-positive (neither Vector nor List usage)
  • #4975: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod false positive when using @MethodSource on a @nested test
  • #4985: [java] UnusedPrivateMethod false-positive / method reference in combination with custom object
• java-codestyle
  • #1619: [java] LocalVariableCouldBeFinal on 'size' variable in for loop
  • #3122: [java] LocalVariableCouldBeFinal should consider blank local variables
  • #4903: [java] UnnecessaryBoxing, but explicit conversion is necessary
  • #4924: [java] UnnecessaryBoxing false positive in PMD 7.0.0 in lambda
  • #4930: [java] EmptyControlStatement should not allow empty try with concise resources
  • #4954: [java] LocalVariableNamingConventions should allow unnamed variables by default
  • #5028: [java] FormalParameterNamingConventions should accept unnamed parameters by default
• java-errorprone
  • #4042: [java] A false negative about the rule StringBufferInstantiationWithChar
  • #5007: [java] AvoidUsingOctalValues triggers on non-octal double literals with a leading 0
• java-multithreading
  • #2368: [java] False positive UnsynchronizedStaticFormatter in static initializer

🚨 API Changes

Deprecated API

• pmd-java
  • ASTResource#getStableName and the corresponding attribute @StableName

✨ External Contributions

• #5020: [java] Fix AvoidUsingOctalValues false-positive - Gold856 (@Gold856)

📈 Stats

• 152 commits
• 46 closed tickets & PRs
• Days since last release: 35

26-April-2024 - 7.1.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 7.1.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

• 🚀 New and noteworthy
  • More robust CPD reports
  • ✨ New Rules
  • 🌟 Rule Changes
• 🐛 Fixed Issues
• 🚨 API Changes
  • Deprecated methods
• ✨ External Contributions
• 📈 Stats

🚀 New and noteworthy

More robust CPD reports

There were a number of circumstances, specially around (but not limited to) literal sequences, were CPD would
report duplicate overlapping or partially overlapping matches. These have now been fixed, and CPD will report
only the longest non-overlapping duplicate.

These improvements apply to all supported languages, irrespective of supported flags.

✨ New Rules

• The new Java rule UnnecessaryVarargsArrayCreation reports explicit array creation
  when a varargs is expected. This is more heavy to read and could be simplified.
• The new Java rule ConfusingArgumentToVarargsMethod reports some confusing situations
  where a varargs method is called with an inexact argument type. These may end up in a mismatch between the expected
  parameter type and the actual value.
• The new Java rule LambdaCanBeMethodReference reports lambda expressions that can be replaced
  with a method reference. Please read the documentation of the rule for more info. This rule is now part of the Quickstart
  ruleset.

🌟 Rule Changes

• JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert and JUnitTestContainsTooManyAsserts
  have a new property named extraAssertMethodNames. With this property, you can configure which additional static
  methods should be considered as valid verification methods. This allows to use custom mocking or assertion libraries.

🐛 Fixed Issues

• core
  • #494: [core] Adopt JApiCmp to enforce control over API changes
  • #4942: [core] CPD: --skip-duplicate-files has no effect (7.0.0 regression)
  • #4959: [core] Upgrade saxon to 12.4
• cli
  • #4791: [cli] Could not find or load main class
  • #4913: [cli] cpd-gui closes immediately
• doc
  • #4901: [doc] Improve documentation on usage of violationSuppressXPath
• apex
  • #4418: [apex] ASTAnnotation.getImage() does not return value as written in the class
• apex-errorprone
  • #3953: [apex] EmptyCatchBlock false positive with formal (doc) comments
• cpp
  • #2438: [cpp] Repeated Duplication blocks
• java
  • #4899: [java] Parsing failed in ParseLock#doParse() java.io.IOException: Stream closed
  • #4902: [java] "Bad intersection, unrelated class types" for Constable[] and Enum[]
  • #4947: [java] Broken TextBlock parser
• java-bestpractices
  • #1084: [java] Allow JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert to configure verification methods
  • #3216: [java] New rule: UnnecessaryVarargsArrayCreation
  • #4435: [java] [7.0-rc1] UnusedAssignment for used field
  • #4569: [java] ForLoopCanBeForeach reports on loop for (int i = 0; i < list.size(); i = 2)
  • #4618: [java] UnusedAssignment false positive with conditional assignments of fields
• java-codestyle
  • #4602: [java] UnnecessaryImport: false positives with static imports
  • #4785: [java] False Positive: PMD Incorrectly report violation for UnnecessaryImport
  • #4779: [java] Examples in documentation of MethodArgumentCanBeFinal do not trigger the rule
  • #4881: [java] ClassNamingConventions: interfaces are identified as abstract classes (regression in 7.0.0)
• java-design
  • #2440: [java] FinalFieldCouldBeStatic FN when the right side of the assignment is a constant expression
  • #3694: [java] SingularField ignores static variables
  • #4873: [java] AvoidCatchingGenericException: Can no longer suppress on the exception itself
• java-errorprone
  • #2056: [java] CloseResource false-positive with URLClassLoader in cast expression
  • #4751: [java] PMD crashes when analyzing CloseResource Rule
  • #4928: [java] EmptyCatchBlock false negative when allowCommentedBlocks=true
  • #4948: [java] ImplicitSwitchFallThrough: False-positive with nested switch statements
• java-performance
  • #3845: [java] InsufficientStringBufferDeclaration should consider literal expression
  • #4874: [java] StringInstantiation: False-positive when using new String(charArray)
  • #4886: [java] BigIntegerInstantiation: False Positive with Java 17 and BigDecimal.TWO
• pom-errorprone
  • #4388: [pom] InvalidDependencyTypes doesn't consider dependencies at all
• misc
  • #4967: Fix reproducible build issues with 7.0.0

🚨 API Changes

Deprecated methods

• pmd-java
  • ASTLambdaExpression#getBlock and ASTLambdaExpression#getExpression
  • SingularFieldRule#mayBeSingular has been deprecated for
    removal. The method is only useful for the rule itself and shouldn't be used otherwise.

✨ External Contributions

• #4864: Fix #1084 [Java] add extra assert method names to Junit rules - Erwan Moutymbo (@emouty)
• #4894: Fix #4791 Error caused by space in JDK path - Scrates1 (@Scrates1)

📈 Stats

• 205 commits
• 71 closed tickets & PRs
• Days since last release: 34

22-March-2024 - 7.0.0

🎉 After a long time, we're excited to bring you now 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.

🤝🙏 Many thanks to all users and contributors who were testing the release candidates and
provided feedback and/or PRs!

✨ PMD 7...

• ...has a new logo
• ...analyzes Java 21 and Java 22 projects with even better type resolution and symbol table support
• ...analyzes Kotlin and Swift
• ...analyzes Apex with a new parser
• ...finds duplicated code in Coco, Julia, TypeScript
• ...ships 11 new rules and tons of improvements for existing rules
• ...provides a new CLI interface with progress bar
• ...supports Antlr based languages
• ...and many more enhancements

💥 Note: Since PMD 7 is a major release, it is not a drop-in replacement for PMD 6.55.0.
A detailed documentation of required changes are available in the Migration Guide for PMD 7.

<dependency>
  <groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
  <artifactId>pmd-compat6</artifactId>
  <version>${pmdVersion}</version>
</dependency>

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
pmd check --use-version java-22-preview ...

30-September-2023 - 7.0.0-rc4

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.

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
pmd check --use-version java-21-preview ...

30-May-2023 - 7.0.0-rc3

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.

29-April-2023 - 7.0.0-rc2

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.

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.

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
  • Java 20 Support
  • T-SQL support
• Fixed Issues
• API Changes
  • Go
  • Java
• External Contributions
• Stats

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:

• ignore comments
• honor comment-based suppressions

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:
  • GoLanguageModule

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