java-misconceptions-pmd

Detecting misconceptions in Java code with PMD

Setup:

Install PyGithub:

pip3 install PyGithub

On your GitHub account, go to "Developer Settings" and create a "Personal Access Token". You will use this token to get programmatic access to Github (via the PyGithub API):

https://github.com/settings/tokens

Get necessary tools (classroom-util and yaclu):

git clone https://github.com/geoffryan/classroom-util.git
git clone git@bitbucket.org:igormoreno/yaclu.git

Edit the get-assignment-repos.py script in the yaclu folder, put your GitHub personal access token in there (in the line g = Github(...)):

cd yaclu
vi get-assignment-repos.py
cd ..

Edit the run.py script, insert the correct organisation name in the line org='YOUR_ORG_NAME_HERE'

Run

./compile_rules.sh

in this project folder.

Requirements

For run.py to work there are several requirements:

• A Github organisation (for clone and pull functionality)
• The students repos must be named with the scheme lab-[0-9]+- (i.e. lab-01-example is a repo for lab01)

Usage 1

To run PMD on several folders it is possible to utilise run.py:

./run.py lab01 -check -report

the results will be in the folder lab01, each student's folder will also have its results.

Usage 2

It is also possible to run PMD without, from the root of this repository use:

CLASSPATH=pf2_custom_rules.jar ./pmd-bin-6.14.0/bin/run.sh pmd -no-cache -f text -d target_folder -R myrule.xml

this will run PMD for the target folder, change the CLASSPATH to pf2_custom_rules_enabler.jar to run with the enablers

Flags

There are several flags, the standard ones are those seen in the Usage section but there are more available:

• -clone : clone the repos corresponding to the given lab
• -pull : pull the repos corresponding to the given lab
• -check : run PMD on all the repos
• -report : create a file with the report
• -enablers : run with the enablers instead of the detectors