# Gradle

Table of Contents

The Gradle Build Tool provides a PMD Plugin that can be added to your build configuration. Technically it is based on the Ant Task.

## Example

In your `build.gradle` add the following:

    plugins {
        id 'pmd'
    }

### Custom ruleset

Configuration of a custom ruleset looks like this:

    pmd {
        ruleSetFiles = files("custom-pmd-ruleset.xml")
        ruleSets = []
    }

Note: The `ruleSets` array is explicitly set to empty to avoid using the default configuration.

### Fail the build

If you want to fail the build for pmd violations, you need to set `ignoreFailures`:

    pmd {
        ignoreFailures = false
    }

More configuration options are documented on PMD Extension.

### Upgrade PMD version

If you want to use a newer PMD version than the default one provided with gradle, you can do so with the property `toolVersion`:

    pmd {
        toolVersion = "7.23.0"
    }

Note: For PMD 7, at least gradle 8.6 is needed. See Support for PMD 7.0.

## References

Source code for Gradle’s PMD Plugin is available here:

- gradle/gradle code-quality
  - Pmd.java
  - PmdExtension.java
  - PmdPlugin.java
- The default PMD version used by gradle: DEFAULT_PMD_VERSION

Tags: userdocs tools