[Codenarc-user] CodeNarc: Adding Custom Rules in a Grails project

[Jan K. <ja...@fa...>]

Hello,

I am new to CodeNarc but rather experienced in Static Code Analysis. I am
working on a Grails project where we want to apply static code analysis to
scan for some project specific patterns. Adding the CodeNarc plugin to
Grails and running codenarc (Plugin 0.12, CodeNarc 0.13) was really simple.

I am wondering if it is possible to create CodeNarc Rules local to my Grails
project. I read the documentation and watched the screencast on creating new
rules. But this all refers to creating new rules in the context of the
codenarc project. Is it possible to create a rule in a grails project and
reference it from the ruleset?

I am a bit stuck right now and any hint or help is greatly appreciated.

1) Changing from the standard ruleset (somehow part of the CodeNarc for
grails Plugin) to my ruleset using this configuration in Config.groovy:

codenarc.ruleSetFiles="file:grails-app/conf/MyRuleSet.groovy"

Causes all violations to disappear from the generated report. I have the
standard groovy ruleset configured and all these rules get listed in the
report, but no violation is generated. Commenting out the ruleSetFile
configuration and running grails codenarc brings back the violations.

Is this a Grails Plugin issue or a CodeNarc Issue? Any idea or suggestion
how I could test this outside of the Grails context?

2) I have created my own simple test rule and put it into the src/groovy
folder in the Grails project structure. I am not sure if this is a valid
approach, but it seems to violate some implicit assumptions. Adding my rule
to the ruleset and running 'grails codenarc' leads to the following error:

Running CodeNarc ...

FAILED -- java.lang.AssertionError: No such rule named [MyRule]. Expression:
ruleClass. Values: ruleClass = null

Seems that the Rule script could not be found by CodeNarc. Again, am I
missing something? Is it possible at to create and use a Grails project
local rule?

Again, any hints or help is greatly appreciated. I would really like to get
this to work, as the combination of Groovy and the CodeNarc API for
AST-analysis seem to be pretty powerful for writing static code checks.

Best regards,

Jan