@codacy/tools-pmd-7

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Updating patterns
• Updating the PMD version
• Development
• Notes for maintainers

Overview

Multi-language static analysis tool using the PMD CLI. Uses the CLI execution strategy -- spawns the PMD shell script via spawnTool() and parses its JSON output.

| Property | Value | | ------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Tool ID | PMD7 | | Codacy UUID | ed7e8287-707d-485a-a0cb-e211004432c2 | | Strategy | CLI | | Languages | Java, Javascript, Kotlin, Swift, PLSQL, XML, Apex, Velocity, VisualForce, JSP | | Binary | pmd (shell script from PMD distribution zip) | | File patterns | **/*.java, **/*.js, **/*.jsx, **/*.kt, **/*.kts, **/*.swift, **/*.sql, **/*.pls, **/*.plb, **/*.pkb, **/*.pks, **/*.xml, **/*.pom, **/*.wsdl, **/*.xsl, **/*.cls, **/*.trigger, **/*.vm, **/*.page, **/*.component, **/*.jsp |

Updating patterns

# Re-fetch pattern metadata from the Codacy API
pnpm prefetch

# Commit the result
git add src/patterns.json

Pattern IDs follow the format PMD7_category_{lang}_{categoryDir}_{RuleName}, e.g. PMD7_category_java_errorprone_EmptyCatchBlock.

Updating the PMD version

1. Update PMD_VERSION in src/adapter.ts
2. Update PMD_DOWNLOAD_URL and PMD_EXTRACTED_DIR constants accordingly
3. Run pnpm prefetch to check for new/removed rules
4. Run pnpm test to verify compatibility
5. If the major version changes, create a new adapter package (pmd-8/)

Development

pnpm build    # Build with tsup
pnpm test     # Run tests (requires Java + PMD in PATH or installed)

To install PMD locally for testing, download from https://github.com/pmd/pmd/releases and add bin/ to your PATH. Java 8+ is required.

Notes for maintainers

• Preset mappings (src/pattern-mappings.json): same shape as PMD 6, with one upstream difference that matters. PMD 7 renamed the JUnit* best-practice rules to UnitTest* to make them test-framework-agnostic, so those are claimed by junit, junit-5 and testng, while the rules that are still JUnit-version-specific go to one key each. jakarta-ee covers the EJB rules, and the two Apache Commons rules use their own tags (lib:apache-commons-logging, lib:apache-commons-fileupload). That rename is exactly the drift packages/runner/test/mapping-drift.test.ts exists to catch — a prefix copied from PMD 6 would match nothing here and fail silently.

  The test-framework keys gate on lib:junit / lib:junit-5 / lib:testng tags, not on prefixes, and that is deliberate: PMD renames this family more often than any other, so a prefix list is a standing drift liability. It has already happened twice. The first time was the JUnit* → UnitTest* rename above. The second was JUnit5TestShouldBePackagePrivate → JUnitJupiterTestShouldBePackagePrivate, which silently killed the PMD7_category_java_bestpractices_JUnit5 prefix and with it the whole junit-5 gate for that rule. The tags name the framework rather than the rule, so they survive both renames. Prefixes are still right for jakarta-ee, whose EJB rules carry no tag.

  Detection had to learn spring-boot-starter-test (which pulls JUnit 5 transitively and is the only test declaration most Spring projects have), the junit-jupiter-/junit-platform- per-role artifacts, and Gradle's testRuntimeOnly verb — without those, gating these default-on rules would have lost them for every Spring Boot repo.

• PMD requires Java 8+ as a runtime. The adapter uses ensureJre() from @codacy/tooling to download Adoptium Temurin JDK 17 if no suitable Java is found on the system.

• The PMD distribution is downloaded as a zip from GitHub releases and extracted to toolInstallDir/pmd-bin-{version}/.

• The JAVA_HOME environment variable is set when invoking PMD if using a non-system Java binary.

• PMD's JSON output format provides beginline/begincolumn/endline/endcolumn, all 1-based. No offset conversion needed.

• PMD priority (1-5, 1=highest) maps to numeric confidence: 1-2 -> 3 (high), 3 -> 2 (medium), 4-5 -> 1 (low).

• Pattern ID to rule reference mapping: PMD7_category_java_errorprone_EmptyCatchBlock -> category/java/errorprone.xml/EmptyCatchBlock.

• Config file detection supports ruleset.xml and apex-ruleset.xml in the repository root.

• When patterns are specified, a generated ruleset XML is written to the generated config dir and passed via -R.

• When no patterns or local config is specified, PMD runs with the built-in rulesets/java/quickstart.xml.

• The --no-fail-on-violation flag ensures PMD exits 0 even when violations are found.

• The --file-list option is used to pass target files via a temp file rather than command-line arguments, avoiding argument length limits.

• Processing errors (unparseable files) are mapped to AnalysisError with level "warning".

• Configuration errors (invalid rules) are mapped to AnalysisError with level "warning".