PMD
An extensible multilanguage static code analyzer. (by pmd)
Spotbugs
SpotBugs is FindBugs' successor. A tool for static analysis to look for bugs in Java code. (by spotbugs)
| PMD | Spotbugs | |
|---|---|---|
| 23 | 19 | |
| 5,127 | 3,675 | |
| 1.7% | 1.1% | |
| 9.9 | 9.6 | |
| 4 days ago | 4 days ago | |
| Java | Java | |
| GNU General Public License v3.0 or later | GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only |
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
PMD
Posts with mentions or reviews of PMD.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-02-27.
- Análise Comparativa: Aider vs. PMD vs. Semgrep
-
We Have Code Quality At Home: Open Source Java Code Quality Tools
PMD is a source code static analysis tool. It inspects your Java files for any issues, and has a configurable set of rules to look at.
- PMD 7 Is Here
-
Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer: already time for retirement?
While the security findings can be pretty elaborate and helpful, the code quality and performance focused findings are not that impressive and can often be detected by more basic or powerful tools like SonarQube (paying) or PMD (free). To see what I mean you can have a look at the list of Java code quality detectors, which is pretty short and contains a lot of simple findings like:
-
Code Review for Flows
Also saw this convo has a couple years worth of ideas going on … https://github.com/pmd/pmd/issues/3413
-
Custom Gradle Plugin for Unified Static Code Analysis
PMD and Checkstyle are static analysis tools that check your code on each project build. Gradle allows to apply them easily.
-
Spring Boot – Black Box Testing
The generated classes should be put into .gitignore. Otherwise, if you have Checkstyle, PMD, or SonarQube in your project, then generated classes can violate some rules. Besides, if you don't put them into .gitignore, then each pull request might become huge due to the fact that even a slightest fix can lead to lots of changes in the generated classes.
-
After Java tutorials, now what???
- PMD Static Code Analysis tool: https://pmd.github.io/
-
Ask HN: What is a modern Java environment?
PMD, Spotbugs, Nullaway: Java linting/static analysis (https://pmd.github.io, https://spotbugs.github.io, https://github.com/uber/NullAway)
-
Code smell plugin
PMD, and checkstyle as well.
Spotbugs
Posts with mentions or reviews of Spotbugs.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-05-06.
-
We Have Code Quality At Home: Open Source Java Code Quality Tools
SpotBugs is an open source static anlysis tool. "SpotBugs uses static analysis to inspect Java bytecode for occurrences of bug patterns." This means that SpotBugs runs against the compiled source source code, rather than raw Java files. Because it analyses bytecode, it can catch some types of bugs that source code analysis would not catch.
-
Handling EI_EXPOSE_REP & EI_EXPOSE_REP2 👨🏻💻
SpotBugs is a great tool for static code analysis. Recently I got two similar warnings in one of the codebases I work on and I had to fix it.
- Primeiros passos no desenvolvimento Java em 2023: um guia particular
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Static Code Analyzer for JAVA development: any recommendations ??
SpotBugs is pretty good.
-
Ask HN: What is a modern Java environment?
PMD, Spotbugs, Nullaway: Java linting/static analysis (https://pmd.github.io, https://spotbugs.github.io, https://github.com/uber/NullAway)
- What are some useful static analyzers for Java?
- Go CheckLocks Analyzer
-
Is there a tool to track CVEs for the software that we use?
While at it you could also point them to static code analyzers such as error_prone, spotbugs and pmd (use all 3 at once - they complement each other in detecting different issues).
-
SpotBugs supports SARIF that supports integration with other SAST tools
First, it's better to use SpotBugs 4.4.1 and above, that includes a fix to make SARIF report compatible with Github code scanning API requirements.
-
Needing to run GUI application from java docker image
RUN wget https://github.com/spotbugs/spotbugs/releases/download/4.4.1/spotbugs-4.4.1.tgz
What are some alternatives?
When comparing PMD and Spotbugs you can also consider the following projects:
Error Prone - Catch common Java mistakes as compile-time errors
SonarQube - Continuous Inspection
infer - A static analyzer for Java, C, C++, and Objective-C
FindBugs - The new home of the FindBugs project