I have installed the mentioned version of the eclipse plugin in eclipse Juno. After a restart I enabled PMD for that project in the project preferences and selected a manually created ruleset file instead. Afterwards the list of selected checks is empty in the preferences and when triggering PMD to check the source code, it tells that 0 out of ~200 rules are used. So no check is performed at all. Morover, when trying to manually enable on of the rules in the list in the preferences I end up with a NPE:
!ENTRY org.eclipse.jface 4 2 2013-07-07 14:43:27.262
!MESSAGE Problems occurred when invoking code from plug-in: "org.eclipse.jface".
!STACK 0
java.lang.NullPointerException
at net.sourceforge.pmd.eclipse.ui.preferences.panelmanagers.SummaryPanelManager.showFor(SummaryPanelManager.java:73)
at net.sourceforge.pmd.eclipse.ui.properties.PMDProjectPropertyPage.updateDescriptionField(PMDProjectPropertyPage.java:460)
at net.sourceforge.pmd.eclipse.ui.properties.PMDProjectPropertyPage.access$2(PMDProjectPropertyPage.java:457)
at net.sourceforge.pmd.eclipse.ui.properties.PMDProjectPropertyPage$5.selectionChanged(PMDProjectPropertyPage.java:448)
at org.eclipse.jface.viewers.Viewer$2.run(Viewer.java:164)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.SafeRunner.run(SafeRunner.java:42)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.JFaceUtil$1.run(JFaceUtil.java:49)
at org.eclipse.jface.util.SafeRunnable.run(SafeRunnable.java:175)
at org.eclipse.jface.viewers.Viewer.fireSelectionChanged(Viewer.java:162)
at org.eclipse.jface.viewers.StructuredViewer.updateSelection(StructuredViewer.java:2188)
at org.eclipse.jface.viewers.StructuredViewer.handleSelect(StructuredViewer.java:1211)
at org.eclipse.jface.viewers.StructuredViewer$4.widgetSelected(StructuredViewer.java:1241)
at org.eclipse.jface.util.OpenStrategy.fireSelectionEvent(OpenStrategy.java:239)
at org.eclipse.jface.util.OpenStrategy.access$4(OpenStrategy.java:233)
at org.eclipse.jface.util.OpenStrategy$1.handleEvent(OpenStrategy.java:403)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(EventTable.java:84)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.sendEvent(Display.java:4136)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:1458)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:1481)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:1466)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.notifyListeners(Widget.java:1271)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Display.java:3982)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Display.java:3621)
at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.runEventLoop(Window.java:825)
at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.open(Window.java:801)
at org.eclipse.ui.dialogs.PropertyDialogAction.run(PropertyDialogAction.java:158)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.Action.runWithEvent(Action.java:498)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem.handleWidgetSelection(ActionContributionItem.java:584)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem.access$2(ActionContributionItem.java:501)
at org.eclipse.jface.action.ActionContributionItem$5.handleEvent(ActionContributionItem.java:411)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(EventTable.java:84)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.sendEvent(Display.java:4136)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:1458)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:1481)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:1466)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.notifyListeners(Widget.java:1271)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Display.java:3982)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Display.java:3621)
at org.eclipse.e4.ui.internal.workbench.swt.PartRenderingEngine$9.run(PartRenderingEngine.java:1053)
at org.eclipse.core.databinding.observable.Realm.runWithDefault(Realm.java:332)
at org.eclipse.e4.ui.internal.workbench.swt.PartRenderingEngine.run(PartRenderingEngine.java:942)
at org.eclipse.e4.ui.internal.workbench.E4Workbench.createAndRunUI(E4Workbench.java:86)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench$5.run(Workbench.java:588)
at org.eclipse.core.databinding.observable.Realm.runWithDefault(Realm.java:332)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench.createAndRunWorkbench(Workbench.java:543)
at org.eclipse.ui.PlatformUI.createAndRunWorkbench(PlatformUI.java:149)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.ide.application.IDEApplication.start(IDEApplication.java:124)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.app.EclipseAppHandle.run(EclipseAppHandle.java:196)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.internal.adaptor.EclipseAppLauncher.runApplication(EclipseAppLauncher.java:110)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.internal.adaptor.EclipseAppLauncher.start(EclipseAppLauncher.java:79)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:353)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:180)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:629)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:584)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:1438)
I have attached the rule file for references. It is correctly used by a PMD ant task.
Did you upgrade the pmd eclipse plugin or installed it in a fresh eclipse?
The exception basically says, that you have some rule in the list, which maybe doesn't exists anymore (the rule itself is null...). It could be caused by an old plugin version still laying around or old configuration.
Could you try again with a fresh eclipse installation?
This was a completely new installation of PMD. I never had this plugin installed before.
Could this be a version conflict between the version of PMD I used to configure the rules and the one the plugin uses internally?
I have attached the rules files I am having the problem with.