#1278 UnusedPrivateMethod spurious warnings for methods called with subclasses of their arguments

[Ross]

Rule:
UnusedPrivateMethod

Rule set:
Unused Code

Generates the following incorrect warnings for the following code:

Avoid unused private methods such as 'badA(A)'
Avoid unused private methods such as 'badX(Exception)'

public class C {

    private void badA(A a) {}
    private void badX(Exception e) {}

    private void goodA(A a) {}
    private void goodN(A a) {}
    private void goodO(Object o) {}

    public void bad() {
        B b = null;
        badA(b);
        badA(new B());
        badX(new X());

        goodA(new A());
        goodN(null);
        goodO(new A());
    }
}

class A {}

class B extends A {}

class X extends Exception {}

[Andreas Dangel]

I couldn't reproduce your problem.
Are you using already the "auxclasspath" option? (e.g. for ant see http://pmd.sourceforge.net/pmd-5.2.1/usage/ant-task.html)
How do you start pmd? (commandline, ant, ...)

Could please check the attached test case in bug-1278.zip?

Thanks,
Andreas

[Andreas Dangel]

I assume, this is just caused by missing auxclasspath option.

While fixing [#1276], I've changed the behavior of PMD if no auxclasspath is configured. In this case, there might be some false negatives (such as [#1226]) in this rule, but much less false positives.

So, I'm closing this issue as "obsolete".

[Ross]

Sorry, I missed the emails about your comments.

I am using EasyPMD 6.0 in NetBeans, with a Java free-form project.

Do you know how to set the auxclasspath for that? If not, I will ask the creator of EasyPMD.

Thanks.

[Andreas Dangel]

It looks like you can configure "Additional classpath" URLs for EasyPMD - which should configure the auxclasspath.