How to Configure a Checkstyle Configuration for Java in Jenkins

Question

I'm trying to switch from the default checkstyle configuration, sun-checks, to google-checks.

In my jenkinsfile, I'm writing:

   stage('checkstyle') {
            steps {
                sh "mvn clean checkstyle:checkstyle -Dcheckstyle.config.location='https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/blob/master/src/main/resources/google_checks.xml'"
                checkstyle canComputeNew: false, defaultEncoding: '', healthy: '', pattern: 'target/checkstyle-result.xml', unHealthy: ''
            }
        }

This is failing with the error message

Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-checkstyle-plugin:2.17:checkstyle (default-cli) on project pmm: An error has occurred in Checkstyle report generation.: Failed during checkstyle execution: Failed during checkstyle configuration: unable to parse configuration stream - Element type "html" must be declared.:8:17 -> [Help 1]

How can I change the checkstyle configuration for Jenkins?

rveach rveach · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-30T18:37:49

https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/blob/master/src/main/resources/google_checks.xml

First, you are giving it an HTML document not the XML file. You must use the URL to github's raw file.

Example: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/master/src/main/resources/google_checks.xml

Secondly, you shouldn't use the online SNAPSHOT version of google_checks. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/44060396/1016482 to understand why.

How can I change the checkstyle configuration for Jenkins?

Extract the configuration found in the checkstyle JAR (if your going to change it), and have your maven command use that instead.

How to Configure a Checkstyle Configuration for Java in Jenkins

1 Answers