Chapter 56. The Checkstyle Plugin

Table of Contents

56.1. Usage
56.2. Tasks
56.3. Project layout
56.4. Dependency management
56.5. Configuration
56.6. Customizing the HTML report

The Checkstyle plugin performs quality checks on your project's Java source files using Checkstyle and generates reports from these checks.

56.1. Usage

To use the Checkstyle plugin, include the following in your build script:

Example 56.1. Using the Checkstyle plugin

build.gradle

apply plugin: 'checkstyle'

The plugin adds a number of tasks to the project that perform the quality checks. You can execute the checks by running gradle check.

Note that Checkstyle will run with the same Java version used to run Gradle.

56.2. Tasks

The Checkstyle plugin adds the following tasks to the project:

Table 56.1. Checkstyle plugin - tasks

Task name	Depends on	Type	Description
`checkstyleMain`	`classes`	`Checkstyle`	Runs Checkstyle against the production Java source files.
`checkstyleTest`	`testClasses`	`Checkstyle`	Runs Checkstyle against the test Java source files.
`checkstyleSourceSet`	`sourceSetClasses`	`Checkstyle`	Runs Checkstyle against the given source set's Java source files.

The Checkstyle plugin adds the following dependencies to tasks defined by the Java plugin.

Table 56.2. Checkstyle plugin - additional task dependencies

Task name	Depends on
`check`	All Checkstyle tasks, including `checkstyleMain` and `checkstyleTest`.

56.3. Project layout

The Checkstyle plugin expects the following project layout:

Table 56.3. Checkstyle plugin - project layout

File	Meaning
`config/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml`	Checkstyle configuration file

56.4. Dependency management

The Checkstyle plugin adds the following dependency configurations:

Table 56.4. Checkstyle plugin - dependency configurations

Name	Meaning
`checkstyle`	The Checkstyle libraries to use

56.5. Configuration

See the CheckstyleExtension class in the API documentation.

56.6. Customizing the HTML report

The HTML report generated by the Checkstyle task can be customized using a XSLT stylesheet, for example to highlight specific errors or change its appearance:

Example 56.2. Customizing the HTML report

build.gradle

tasks.withType(Checkstyle) {
    reports {
        xml.enabled false
        html.enabled true
        html.stylesheet resources.text.fromFile('config/xsl/checkstyle-custom.xsl')
    }
}

View a sample Checkstyle stylesheet.