Chapter 29. The Checkstyle Plugin

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

29.1. Usage

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

Example 29.1. 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.

The Checkstyle plugin adds the following tasks to the project:

Table 29.1. 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 29.2. Checkstyle plugin - additional task dependencies

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

The Checkstyle plugin expects the following project layout:

Table 29.3. Checkstyle plugin - project layout

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

The Checkstyle plugin adds the following dependency configurations:

Table 29.4. Checkstyle plugin - dependency configurations

Name	Meaning
`checkstyle`	The Checkstyle libraries to use

See the CheckstyleExtension class in the API documentation.