PMD working inside intellij as an External Tool - intellij-idea

Question

I would like to make it so that I can Run a PMD check as an external tool from withing intellij 14.x
The only documentation I can find is old and outdated based on pmd 4.x. How do I get it working correctly? Is anyone out there using PMD as an external Tool? I tried downloading the built in PMD plugin but when I pointed it to my custom_pmd_ruleset.xml it ignored it entirely --> perhaps the plugin is broken.

Answer 1

The command line parser has changed in PMD 5.0.1, but the documentation was never updated unfortunately. These are the changes:
args[0] is now -dir
args[1] is now -format
args[2] is now -rulesets
When you -format ideaj, it also needs three more arguments. Those report format specific arguments are now specified with -property {name}={value}:
args[3] is now -property sourcePath
args[4] is now -property classAndMethodName
args[5] is now -property singleFileName
The example command line given in the PMD 4 documentation used parameters:
"$FilePath$" # args[0]
ideaj # args[1]
unusedcode,imports # args[2]
"$Sourcepath$" # args[3]
$FileClass$.method # args[4]
$FileName$ # args[5]
Notice that the 4th argument was actually wrong in the documentation, $FileClass.method should be $FileClass$.method.
So in PMD 5, this is:
pmd \
-dir "$FilePath$" \
-format ideaj \
-rulesets "unusedcode,imports" \
-property sourcePath="$Sourcepath$" \
-property classAndMethodName="$FileClass$.method" \
-property singleFileName="$FileName$
You can configure IntelliJ like this:
File > Settings
Tools > External Tools
Add a new external tool:
Name: PMD (or anything you like)
Description: PMD source code analyzer (or anything you like)
Options: Synchronize files after execution; Open console
Show in: Main menu; Editor menu; Project views; Search results
Program: path/to/pmd-bin-5.8.1/bin/run.sh
Parameters: pmd -dir "$FilePath$" -format ideaj -rulesets "unusedcode,imports" -property sourcePath="$Sourcepath$" -property classAndMethodName="$FileClass$.method" -property singleFileName="$FileName$
Working Directory: $ProjectFileDir$

Answer 2

After a fair bit of research, here's what worked for me:
And here's the classpath part that's super long and cut off in the image:
-cp "C:\Users\nate\.m2\repository\commons-io\commons-io\2.4\commons-io-2.4.jar;C:\Users\nate\.m2\repository\org\apache\commons\commons-lang3\3.3.2\commons-lang3-3.3.2.jar;C:\Users\nate\.m2\repository\net\sourceforge\pmd\pmd-core\5.3.2\pmd-core-5.3.2.jar;C:\Users\nate\.m2\repository\net\sourceforge\pmd\pmd-java\5.3.2\pmd-java-5.3.2.jar;C:\Users\nate\.m2\repository\asm\asm\3.1\asm-3.1.jar;C:\Users\nate\.m2\repository\jaxen\jaxen\1.1.1\jaxen-1.1.1.jar;C:\Users\nate\.m2\repository\com\beust\jcommander\1.48\jcommander-1.48.jar" net.sourceforge.pmd.PMD -R "$ModuleFileDir$\src\test\resources\custom-pmd-rules.xml" -d "$FileDirRelativeToProjectRoot$/$FileName$"
Hopefully that saves someone some time getting it working. Enjoy.