#291 Topscore doesn't work for CheckMethodLengthRules

[Paddy Fagan]

I've been having a discussion on the help forum about
using the CheckMethodLengthRules. see
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?
thread_id=1226185&forum_id=188193

Based on some feedback from Tom Copeland, it
appears that the topscore property isn't working. From
my help article:

I originally ran with the minimum 1, topscore 6 values
from your sample file, and adding and removing the
topscore property made no difference. But I noticed
when I re-ran the rules this morning with the minimum
80, topscore 10 values, that I get slightly different results
e.g.
1. minimum 80, topscore 10 - "PMD found 2080 rule
violations in the code"
2. minimum 80 - "PMD found 2356 rule violations in the
code"
3. topscore 10 - "PMD found 1619 rule violations in the
code"

I was hoping that minimum 80, topscore 10 would give
me the 10 methods with the most lines in excess of 80,
but I'm guessing that's not what's happening.

My rule set looks like this:

<ruleset name="CheckMethodLengthRules"> </ruleset>

<description>
This ruleset checks for excessively long methods
</description>

<rule ref="rulesets/codesize.xml/ExcessiveMethodLength" message="This is one of the 10 longest methods">
<properties>
<property name="minimum" value="80">
<property name="topscore" value="10">
</property></property></properties>
</rule>

In case it makes a difference my build.xml to call the
rules looks like this:
=======================

<project name="CheckMethodLength" default="check_method_length">
<property environment="sysenv."> </property></project>

<property name="dir.server" value="${sysenv.SERVER_DIR}">
<property name="dir.tools.lib" value="../../lib"> </property></property>

<path id="user-content-pmd.classpath">
<fileset dir="${dir.tools.lib}">
<include name="pmd-2.3.jar">
<include name="saxpath-1.0-fcs.jar">
<include name="jaxen-core-1.0-fcs.jar">
</include></include></include></fileset>
</path>

<target name="check_method_length">
<taskdef name="pmd" classname="net.sourceforge.pmd.ant.PMDTask" classpathref="pmd.classpath">
<pmd rulesetfiles="CheckMethodLength.xml" failonerror="true" failonruleviolation="true" printtoconsole="true">
<formatter type="html" tofile="MethodLengthReport.html">
<fileset dir="${dir.server}/components">
<include name="**/impl/*.java">
<include name="**/loaders/*.java">
</include></include></fileset>
</formatter></pmd>
</taskdef></target>

Paddy.

[Tom Copeland]

Logged In: YES
user_id=5159

This is still broken, and it makes these rules far less
useful. Yet I fear to dive into that code. Fear is,
indeed, the mindkiller...

Tom