Using "excludes" config in Findbugs and Checkstyle plugin in Gradle

Question

I have the following Gradle build file: https://github.com/markuswustenberg/jsense/blob/a796055f984ec309db3cc0f3e8340cbccac36e4e/jsense-protobuf/build.gradle which includes:

checkstyle {
  // TODO The excludes are not working, ignore failures for now
  //excludes '**/org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/**'
  ignoreFailures = true
  showViolations = false
}

findbugs {
  // TODO The excludes are not working, ignore failures for now
  //excludes '**/org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/**'
  ignoreFailures = true
}

As you can see, I'm trying to exclude auto-generated code in the package org.jsense.serialize.protobuf.gen. I cannot figure out the format of the strings given to the excludes parameter, and the documentation isn't of much help: http://www.gradle.org/docs/1.10/dsl/org.gradle.api.plugins.quality.FindBugs.html#org.gradle.api.plugins.quality.FindBugs:excludes (it just says "The set of exclude patterns.").

So my question is: How should the excludes pattern strings be formatted for both the Findbugs and Checkstyle plugins?

I'm running Gradle 1.10.

Thanks!

EDIT 1: I got the Checkstyle exclude working with the following:

tasks.withType(Checkstyle) {
  exclude '**/org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/**'
}

However, using the exact same exclude on the Findbugs plugin doesn't work:

tasks.withType(FindBugs) {
  exclude '**/org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/*'
}

EDIT 2: The accepted answer works, and so does using an XML file and filtering on that, like so:

findbugs {
  excludeFilter = file("$projectDir/config/findbugs/excludeFilter.xml")
}

and

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<FindBugsFilter>
  <Match>
    <Package name="org.jsense.serialize.protobuf.gen"/>
  </Match>
</FindBugsFilter>

EDIT 3: This works great, and no XML file is needed:

def excludePattern = 'org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/'
def excludePatternAntStyle = '**/' + excludePattern + '*'
tasks.withType(FindBugs) {
    classes = classes.filter {
        !it.path.contains(excludePattern)
    }
}
tasks.withType(Checkstyle) {
    exclude excludePatternAntStyle
}
tasks.withType(Pmd) {
    exclude excludePatternAntStyle
}

Scraperboard

I have a feeling this is a bug in the Findbugs plugin. The excludes work fine for both Checkstyle and PMD, and according to documentation, they should have the same format. – Scraperboard

I got it to work with an external exclude file (see github.com/markuswustenberg/jsense/blob/…), so I think it's indeed a bug in the Findbugs gradle plugin. I'll file a bug when I find out how. – Scraperboard

Right, reported here: forums.gradle.org/gradle/topics/… – Scraperboard

Answer 1

SourceTask#exclude filters source files. However, FindBugs primarily operates on class files, which you'll have to filter as well. Try something like:

tasks.withType(FindBugs) {
    exclude '**/org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/*'
    classes = classes.filter { 
        !it.path.contains(new File("org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/").path) 
    }
}

PS: It could be that filtering source files makes no difference (and therefore isn't necessary) in case of FindBugs. (I haven't tried though.)

Aubade

Cool, thanks, that works. Which means I perhaps haven't actually found a bug. However, I think it's rather counter-intuitive that the "exclude" works only on sources. That's not what I would expect when using the plugin after reading the documentation, especially when it works as expected with both Checkstyle and PMD. Thoughts? – Scraperboard

Checkstyle and PMD primarily operate on source files, so SourceTask#exclude is good enough for them. It would be nice to have a simpler way to filter FindBugs classes, but it's not immediately clear how to do this, especially in a backwards compatible way. – Aubade

Regarding your PS: Filtering the source makes absolutely no difference. I guess that method is quite useless, then? Or is there a use case where FindBugs actually checks the source? – Scraperboard

It does use the sources (at least in some cases), but my guess is that the class files determine what's being analyzed. – Aubade

Answer 2

If someone looking for a modern day solution:
For checkstyle, you can use something like this in build.gradle:

checkstyleMain.exclude '**/org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/**'

If you want to exclude more than one path
solution 1:

checkstyleMain.exclude '**/org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/**'
checkstyleMain.exclude '**/org/example/some/random/path/**'

solution 2:

checkstyleMain {
    setExcludes(new HashSet(['**/org/jsense/serialize/protobuf/gen/**', '**/org/example/some/random/path/**']))
}

Patsypatt