Eclipse Checkstyle Plug-in

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Introduction
Checkstyle is a development tool written by Oliver Burn to help you ensure that your Java code adheres to a set of coding standards. Checkstyle does this by inspecting your Java source code and pointing out items that deviate from a defined set of coding rules. The full Checkstyle distribution is included with the plug-in. In addition to using the Eclipse Checkstyle plug-in you can also use Checkstyle from the command line or as part of an Ant build.
With the Checkstyle Eclipse plug-in your code is constantly inspected for problems. Within the Eclipse workbench you are notified of problems via the task window and source code markers just as you would see with compiler errors or warnings. The current release of the Eclipse plug-in runs the tree-walker checks from Checkstyle. These checks only check individual Java source files. A future release of the plug-in may include Checkstyle checks that span across multiple files.

Download & Installation
The Checkstyle Eclipse plug-in can be downloaded from the SourceForge project page. The download package consists of a single zip file that contains both the Checkstyle plug-in and the Checkstyle core engine.
Once you have downloaded the distribution zip file extract its contents. Copy the com.atlassw.tools.eclipse.checkstyle_<version> folder to your Eclipse plug-in folder and restart Eclipse. That's all there is to it, you are now ready to run Checkstyle.

Important Note: Eclipse 2.0.x is no longer supported as of plug-in release 3.4.0.

Important Note: If you had a pre 3.1.0 version of the Eclipse Checkstyle plug-in installed you will need to remove it before installing the new plug-in. Also, remove any .checkstyle files from the root of your projects, these files are not compatible with this version of the plug-in. After removing these files be sure and refresh your workspace so that Eclipse is aware that they have been removed.

What Next?
See the on-line help within Eclipse for more information on how to configure and use Checkstyle. To get to the on-line help go the Help menu and select Help Contents. Within the help window select the Checkstyle topic in the left column.

Copyright © 2002-2004 David Schneider. All Rights Reserved.