PMD Release Notes

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??-????-2018 - 6.10.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 6.10.0.

This is a minor release.

New and noteworthy

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

• The Java rule JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert (java-bestpractices) now also detects Soft Assertions.

Fixed Issues

• all
  • #1284: [doc] Keep record of every currently deprecated API
  • #1318: [test] Kotlin DSL to ease test writing
  • #1341: [doc] Documentation Error with Regex Properties
• java
  • #1460: [java] Intermittent PMD failure : PMD processing errors while no violations reported
• java-bestpractices
  • #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

API Changes

Properties framework

The properties framework is about to get a lifting, and for that reason, the following APIs are now deprecated until 7.0.0. The proposed changes to the API are described on the wiki

• Several classes and interfaces from the properties framework are now deprecated and will be removed with 7.0.0.
  • MethodProperty, FloatProperty, FileProperty, TypeProperty and their multi-valued counterparts are discontinued for lack of a use-case, and will probably not be replaced with 7.0.0. Users of FloatProperty should consider using a DoubleProperty.
  • EnumeratedPropertyDescriptor, NumericPropertyDescriptor, PackagedPropertyDescriptor, and the related builders (in net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.builders) will be removed. In the future, these interfaces won’t be around but their functionality will, under another form. The related methods PropertyTypeId#isPropertyNumeric and PropertyTypeId#isPropertyPackaged are also deprecated.
  • All classes of net.sourceforge.pmd.properties.modules are deprecated and will be removed. They were never intended as public api.
  • The classes PropertyDescriptorField, PropertyDescriptorBuilderConversionWrapper, and the methods PropertyDescriptor#attributeValuesById, PropertyDescriptor#isDefinedExternally and PropertyTypeId#getFactory are deprecated with no intended replacement. These were used to read and write properties to and from XML, and were never intended as public API.
  • The class ValueParserConstants and the interface ValueParser are deprecated with no intended replacement, they were not intended as public API.
  • Methods from PropertyDescriptor:
    • preferredRowCount is deprecated with no intended replacement. It was never implemented, and does not belong in this interface. The methods uiOrder and compareTo 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 PropertyDescriptor#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

• The implementation of the adapters for the XPath engines Saxon and Jaxen (package net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.ast.xpath) are now deprecated. They’ll be moved to an internal package come 7.0.0. Only Attribute remains public API.

• The interface Dimensionable has been deprecated. It gets in the way of a grammar change for 7.0.0 and won’t be needed anymore (see #997).

• Several methods from ASTLocalVariableDeclaration and ASTFieldDeclaration have also been deprecated:

  • ASTFieldDeclaration won’t be a TypeNode come 7.0.0, so getType and getTypeDefinition are deprecated.

  • The method getVariableName on those two nodes will be removed, too.

  All these are deprecated because those nodes may declare several variables at once, possibly with different types (and obviously with different names). They both implement Iterator<ASTVariableDeclaratorId> though, so you should iterate on each declared variable. See #910.

External Contributions

• #1384: [java] New Rule - UseUnderscoresInNumericLiterals - RajeshR
• #1424: [doc] #1341 Updating Regex Values in default Value Property - avishvat
• #1428: [core] Upgrading JCommander from 1.48 to 1.72 - Thunderforge
• #1430: [doc] Who really knows regex? - Dem Pilafian
• #1434: [java] JUnitTestsShouldIncludeAssert: Recognize AssertJ soft assertions as valid assert statements - Loïc Ledoyen
• #1447: [fortran] Use diamond operator in impl - reudismam
• #1453: [java] Adding the fix for #1440. Showing correct message for CommentDefaultAccessmodifier. - Rohit Kumar

• #1464: [doc] Fix XSS on documentation web page - Maxime Robert

  Note: The release notes of previous versions are available here