checkstyle ANT Task

Description

This task runs checkstyle over specified Java files. The task has been tested using ANT 1.4.1. The latest version of checkstyle can be found at http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/. This task is included in the checkstyle distribution.

Installation

The easiest way is to include checkstyle-all-1.4.jar in the classpath. This contains all the classes required to run checkstyle. Alternatively, you must include the following in the classpath:

checkstyle-1.4.jar
ANTLR 2.7.1 classes. antlr.jar is included in the distribution.
Jakarta Regexp 1.2 classes. jakarta-regexp-1.2.jar is included in the distribution.

To use the task in a build file, you will need the following taskdef declaration:

  <taskdef name="checkstyle"
           classname="com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.CheckStyleTask"/>

Parameters

Attribute	Description	Required
file	File to run checkstyle on.	One of either file or at least one nested fileset element
allowTabs	Indicates whether to allow tabs. Defaults to "false".	No
allowProtected	Indicates whether to allow protected data. Defaults to "false".	No
allowNoAuthor	Indicates whether to allow no @author tag to be defined for class and interface Javadoc comments. Defaults to "false".	No
maxLineLen	Specifies the maximum line length. Default value is defined here.	No
ignoreImportLen	Specifies whether to ignore the maximum line length for import statements. Defaults to "false".	No
maxMethodLen	Specifies the maximum method length. Default value is defined here.	No
maxConstructorLen	Specifies the maximum constructor length. Default value is defined here.	No
maxFileLen	Specifies the maximum file length. Default value is defined here.	No
memberPattern	Specifies the regular expression to match against member variables. Default value is defined here.	No
publicMemberPattern	Specifies the regular expression to match against public member variables. Default value is defined here.	No
paramPattern	Specifies the regular expression to match against parameters. Default value is defined here.	No
constPattern	Specifies the regular expression to match against static/final variables. Default value is defined here.	No
staticPattern	Specifies the regular expression to match against static variables. Default value is defined here.	No
typePattern	Specifies the regular expression to match against type names. Default value is defined here.	No
headerFile	Specifies the file containing the header lines. Default is to not check.	No
headerIgnoreLine	Specifies the line in the header to ignore when comparing. Default it to not ignore any line.	No
javadocScope	Specifies the visibility scope where javadoc comments are checked. Valid values are "nothing", "public", "protected", "package", "private" and "anoninner". Defaults to "private".	No
ignoreImports	Specifies whether to ignore checking import statements. Defaults to "false".	No
ignoreWhitespace	Specifies whether to ignore checking whitespace. Defaults to "false".	No
ignoreCastWhitespace	Specifies whether to ignore checking for whitespace after a cast. Defaults to "false".	No
ignoreBraces	Specifies whether to ignore checking braces. Defaults to "false".	No
failOnViolation	Specifies whether the build will continue even if there are violations. Defaults to "true".	No
cacheFile	Specifies the name of a file that can be used to cache details of files that pass checkstyle. This can signicantly increase the speed of checkstyle on successive runs.	No

Older versions of the checkstyle task supported the boolean parameters relaxJavadoc and ignoreJavadoc. These parameters have been removed because they were conflicting and the semantics of relaxJavadoc was not clearly specified. The two parameters have been replaced by the javadocScope parameter. Instead of ignoreJavadoc="true" you can now use javadocScope="nothing". The behaviour of relaxJavadoc="true" is roughly the same as javadocScope="protected".

Nested Elements

This task supports the nested elements <fileset> and <formatter>. The parameters for the <formatter> element are:

type

The type of output to generate. The valid values are:

plain - specifies the DefaultLogger
xml - specifies the XMLLogger

Defaults to "plain".

toFile

The file to write output to. Defaults to standard output. Note, there is no way to explicitly specify standard output.

Examples

Run checkstyle on a single file

  <checkstyle file="Check.java"/>

Run checkstyle on a set of Java files in directory

  <checkstyle>
    <fileset dir="src/checkstyle" includes="**/*.java"/>
  </checkstyle>

Run checkstyle on a set of Java files and allow tabs

  <checkstyle allowTabs="yes">
    <fileset dir="src/checkstyle" includes="**/*.java"/>
  </checkstyle>

Run checkstyle on a set of files and output messages to standard output in plain format, and a file in XML format

  <checkstyle>
    <fileset dir="src/checkstyle" includes="**/*.java"/>
    <formatter type="plain"/>
    <formatter type="xml" toFile="build/checkstyle_errors.xml"/>
  </checkstyle>

Run checkstyle on a set of Java files and disable pattern matching

  <checkstyle allowTabs="yes"
              paramPattern="."
              constPattern="."
              staticPattern="."
              memberPattern=".">
    <fileset dir="src/checkstyle" includes="**/*.java"/>
  </checkstyle>