How to make maven-pmd-plugin support the latest PMD release? - maven-2

Question

http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-pmd-plugin/ is currently in version 2.4 which supports PMD version 4.2.2
Is it possible to use PMD version 4.2.5 with this plugin, if so how do we do this?

Answer 1

There is a Jira Issue for this, see MPMD-97 (I suggest to vote for it).
For now, you can try to upgrade locally the pmd version used in the plugin with:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-pmd-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.4</version>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>pmd</groupId>
<artifactId>pmd-jdk14</artifactId>
<version>4.2.5</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
I didn't test this, I don't know if it'll work seamlessly.

Answer 2

This is an old question and things have moved on, but I faced a challenge upgrading maven-pmd-plugin:3.8 from pmd 5.6.1 to 5.8.1.
The documentation for doing this was missing from the maven-pmd-plugin page at the time of writing.
Add pmd-core, pmd-java and any other mavenized PMD artifacts as plugin dependencies.
If your rules are contained within in a separate .jar module, add that module to the dependencies also.
Ensure that the check goal is run after the compile phase - validate is too soon. (I picked process-test-classes to invoke it just before any tests are run rather than the more usual verify which is also OK but will run it later).
pom.xml configuration:
<properties>
<rev.javac>1.8</rev.javac>
<rev.pmd-plugin>3.8</rev.pmd-plugin>
<rev.pmd>5.8.1</rev.pmd>
</properties>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-pmd-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${rev.pmd-plugin}</version>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>my.project.group</groupId>
<artifactId>project-standards</artifactId>
<version>${project.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
<artifactId>pmd-core</artifactId>
<version>${rev.pmd}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
<artifactId>pmd-java</artifactId>
<version>${rev.pmd}</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>pmd-validation</id>
<phase>process-test-classes</phase>
<goals>
<goal>check</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<rulesets>
<ruleset>/pmd/project-pmd-rules.xml</ruleset>
</rulesets>
<targetDirectory>${project.build.directory}</targetDirectory>
<targetJdk>${rev.javac}</targetJdk>
<failOnViolation>true</failOnViolation>
<failurePriority>5</failurePriority>
<verbose>false</verbose>
<linkXRef>false</linkXRef>
</configuration>
</plugin>