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The Rule Designer is a graphical tool that helps PMD users develop their customrules. Main features:

• AST inspection: inspect AST structure for any language, including XPath attributes
• XPath rule design: integrated XPath editor, and rule metadata editor
• Rule test edition: create or edit rule test files for thePMD testing framework

The designer is part of PMD's binary distributions. To install a distribution, see thedocumentation page about installing PMD.

The app needs either Oracle Java 8 (which includes JavaFX) or OpenJDK 11+ and a separately installedOpenJFX distribution. VisitJavaFX - Gluon to download an SDK distribution,extract it, and set theJAVAFX_HOME environment variable.

If thebin directory of your PMD distribution is on your shell's path, then you canlaunch the app with

• pmd designer on Linux/ OSX
• pmd.bat designer on Windows

Alternatively, you can launch the program "from source" with Maven. There are two different ways

1. If you are running an OpenJDK buildwithout JavaFX bundled:
   $ ./mvnw -Prunning exec:java will launch the Designer after compiling it and add the JavaFX dependencies onthe classpath.
   Note: JavaFX will be on the classpath and not module path, which might behave a bit differently.
   You can change the version of those dependencies with e.g.-Dopenjfx.version=21.0.9 for OpenJFX 21.See the list of available versionshere.

2. If you are running an OpenJDK buildwith JavaFX bundled (e.g. Azul Zulu, Bellsoft Liberica):
   $ ./mvnw -Prunning exec:java -Dopenjfx.scope=provided will launch the Designer after compiling itwithout putting the JavaFX dependencies on the classpath.
   Note: JavaFX will be on the module path and several packages need to be opened for reflection.Since everything (Maven, Designer) runs in the same JVM, the opened packages are defined in.mvn/jvm.config. Depending on the Java version, you might need additionallyMAVEN_OPTS="--enable-native-access=javafx.graphics --sun-misc-unsafe-memory-access=allow".

The latest version of the designer currentlyworks with PMD 7.0.0 and above.You can simply replacepmd-designer-7.X.Y.jar with thelatest buildin the installation folder of your PMD distribution.

SeeCONTRIBUTING.md for instructions to build the project from source and setup your IDE.

You can package a runnable jar containing the PMD dependencies with maven. Fornow the only option is to build a jar that contains pmd-core and pmd-java:

./mvnw clean package -Dfat-java -Dpmd.core.version=7.0.0-SNAPSHOT

Thepmd.core.version property selects the version of pmd-coreand pmd-javathat will be included. The built jar can then be found in yourtarget directory.Such a jar cannot be used in a PMD distribution and must be used in astandalone fashion, otherwise classpath conflicts may arise.You can additionally add-Dopenjfx.scope=compile to include openjfx as well.

You should never run theinstall goal with the-Dfat-java property! Thiswould install the fat jar in your local repo and may cause dependency conflicts.