Improving Code Quality with PMD and Eclipse | installation & usage

PMD is a static code analyzer for Java. It scans Java source code and looks for potential problems like:

• Possible bugs - empty try/catch/finally/switch statements
• Dead code - unused local variables, parameters and private methods
• Suboptimal code - wasteful String/StringBuffer usage
• Overcomplicated expressions - unnecessary if statements, for loops that could be while loops
• Duplicate code - copied/pasted code means copied/pasted bugs

Follow the below steps to integrate the plugin in Eclipse:

If you are behind a corporate firewall, set the proxy in Eclipse.

Window -> Preferences -> General -> Network Conncetions.

Select Manual proxy configuration.

HTTP Proxy :xxx.yyy.mmm.nnn

Port: 8080

1. Navigate to Help | Software Updates | Find and Install...
2. Select "Search for new features to install" and click Next
3. Click New Remote Site...
4. Enter a name (PMD) and the URL http://pmd.sourceforge.net/eclipse

5. In Sites to include in search check PMD and click Finish
6. In the Search Results dialog check PMD for Eclipse 3 3.1.0 and click Next

7. Accept the terms of the license agreements and click Next
8. Click Finish.
9. Wait for Eclipse to download the required jar files, then click Install
10. Restart the workbench. This will load the PMD plugin.
11. Navigate to Window | Show View | Other...
12. Select PMD | PMD Violations
13. PMD Violations view should appear at the bottom pane

Set up Preferences

1. Download the XMl ruleset file to your workspace directory.
2. Windows ->Preferences -> PMD -> Rules Configuration
3. Clear All
4. Confirm by clicking OK
5. Import rule set...
6. Browse
7. Select the file you downloaded above
8. Click OK to complete import
9. Click OK to close Windows -> Preferences
10. When prompted to perform a full rebuild, select yes.

How to use it?

Before launching Eclipse make sure you have enough memory for PMD. This is particularly important when analyzing large projects. In these situations PMD tends to be memory-hungry. Hence, make sure to start with as much memory as you can afford, for example 512M (eclipse.exe -vmargs -Xmx512M)

If PMD Violations view is not open navigate to Window | Show View | Other... and select PMD | PMD Violations

More -> http://pmd.sourceforge.net/