PMD full changelog

New and noteworthy:
Build Requirement is Java 17:
From now on, Java 17 or newer is required to build PMD. PMD itself still remains compatible with Java 8,
so that it still can be used in a pure Java 8 environment. This allows us to use the latest
checkstyle version during the build.
Fixed Issues:
core
4714: [core] Allow trailing commas in multivalued properties
apex
5935: [apex] @SuppressWarnings - allow whitespace around comma when suppressing multiple rules
apex-design
6022: [apex] ExcessiveClassLength/ExcessiveParameterList include the metric in the message
java-codestyle
5919: [java] ClassNamingConventions: Include integration tests in testClassPattern by default
6029: [java] Fix UnnecessaryCast false-negative in method calls
java-design
5569: [java] ExcessivePublicCount should report number of public "things"
java-documentation
6058: [java] DanglingJavadoc FP in module-info files
java-errorprone
5878: [java] DontUseFloatTypeForLoopIndices false-negative if variable is declared before loop
6075: [java] AssignmentInOperand false positive with lambda expressions
java-multithreading
5880: [java] DoubleCheckedLocking is not detected if more than 1 assignment or more than 2 if statements
misc
6012: [pmd-rulesets] Rulesets should be in alphabetical order
API Changes:
Deprecations:
java
The following methods have been deprecated. Due to refactoring of the internal base class, these methods are not
used anymore and are not required to be implemented anymore:
ExcessiveImportsRule#isViolation
ExcessiveParameterListRule#isViolation
ExcessivePublicCountRule#isViolation
Merged pull requests:
6021: [java] Fix #5569: ExcessiveImports/ExcessiveParameterList/ExcessivePublicCount include the metric in the message - UncleOwen (@UncleOwen)
6022: [apex] ExcessiveClassLength/ExcessiveParameterList include the metric in the message - UncleOwen (@UncleOwen)
6023: [test] Fix #6012: Alphabetically sort all default rules - Zbynek Konecny (@zbynek)
6024: [java] Fix #5878: DontUse

New and noteworthy:
Java 16 Support:
This release of PMD brings support for Java 16. PMD supports JEP 394: Pattern Matching for instanceof and JEP 395: Records. Both have been promoted to be a standard language feature of Java 16.
PMD also supports JEP 397: Sealed Classes (Second Preview) as a preview language feature. In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these language features, you’ll need to enable it via the environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language version 16-preview:
export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
./run.sh pmd -language java -version 16-preview ...
Note: Support for Java 14 preview language features have been removed. The version “14-preview” is no longer available.
Modified Rules:
The Apex rule ApexDoc has two new properties: reportPrivate and reportProtected. Previously the rule only considered public and global classes, methods, and properties.

New and noteworthy:
CPD now supports XML as well:
Thanks to Fernando Cosso CPD can now find duplicates in XML files as well.
This is useful to find duplicated sections in XML files.
Updated PMD Designer:
This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer.
For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.
New Rules:
The new Java Rule LiteralsFirstInComparisons (java-bestpractices) find String literals, that are used in comparisons and are not positioned first. Using the String literal as the receiver of e.g. equals helps to avoid NullPointerExceptions.
This rule is replacing the two old rules PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons and PositionLiteralsFirstInCaseInsensitiveComparisons and extends the check for the methods compareTo, compareToIgnoreCase and contentEquals in addition to equals and equalsIgnoreCase.
Note: This rule also replaces the two mentioned rules in Java's quickstart ruleset.
Deprecated Rules:
The two Java rules PositionLiteralsFirstInComparisons and PositionLiteralsFirs

New and noteworthy:
Updated PMD Designer:
This PMD release ships a new version of the pmd-designer. For the changes, see PMD Designer Changelog.
Java Metrics
The new metric “Class Fan Out Complexity” has been added. See Java Metrics Documentation for details.
Modified Rules:
The Java rules InvalidLogMessageFormat and MoreThanOneLogger (java-errorprone) now both support Log4j2. Note that the rule “InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat” has been renamed to “InvalidLogMessageFormat” to reflect the fact, that it now supports more than slf4j.
The Java rule LawOfDemeter (java-design) ignores now also Builders, that are not assigned to a local variable, but just directly used within a method call chain. The method, that creates the builder needs to end with “Builder”, e.g. newBuilder() or initBuilder() works. This change fixes a couple of false positives.
The Java rule DataflowAnomalyAnalysis (java-errorprone) doesn’t check for UR anomalies (undefined and then referenced) anymore. These checks were all f

New and noteworthy:
Java 14 Support:
This release of PMD brings support for Java 14. PMD can parse Switch Expressions, which have been promoted to be a standard language feature of Java.