# &FindBugs;™ Manual

David H. Hovemeyer
William W. Pugh
2003 - 2012 University of Maryland

This manual is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

The name FindBugs and the FindBugs logo are trademarked by the University of Maryland.

@VERSION@
@RELEASE_DATE@

## Introduction

&FindBugs;™ is a program to find bugs in Java programs. It looks for instances of "bug patterns" --- code instances that are likely to be errors.

This document describes version @VERSION@ of &FindBugs;.We are very interested in getting your feedback on &FindBugs;. Please visit the &FindBugs; web page for the latest information on &FindBugs;, contact information, and support resources such as information about the &FindBugs; mailing lists.

### Requirements

To use &FindBugs;, you need a runtime environment compatible with Java 2 Standard Edition, version 1.5 or later. &FindBugs; is platform independent, and is known to run on GNU/Linux, Windows, and MacOS X platforms.

You should have at least 512 MB of memory to use &FindBugs;. To analyze very large projects, more memory may be needed.

## Installing &FindBugs;™

This chapter explains how to install &FindBugs;.

### Extracting the Distribution

The easiest way to install &FindBugs; is to download a binary distribution. Binary distributions are available in gzipped tar format and zip format. Once you have downloaded a binary distribution, extract it into a directory of your choice.

Extracting a gzipped tar format distribution:

    $ gunzip -c findbugs-@VERSION@.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Extracting a zip format distribution:

    C:\Software>unzip findbugs-@VERSION@.zip

Usually, extracting a binary distribution will create a directory ending in `findbugs-@VERSION@`. For example, if you extracted the binary distribution from the `C:\Software` directory, then the &FindBugs; software will be extracted into the directory `C:\Software\findbugs-@VERSION@`. This directory is the &FindBugs; home directory. We'll refer to it as &FBHome; (or &FBHomeWin; for Windows) throughout this manual.

## Building &FindBugs;™ from Source

This chapter describes how to build &FindBugs; from source code. Unless you are interesting in modifying &FindBugs;, you will probably want to skip to the next chapter.

### Prerequisites

To compile &FindBugs; from source, you will need the following:

- The &FindBugs; source distribution

- JDK 1.5.0 or later

- Apache &Ant;, version 1.6.3 or later

The version of &Ant; included as `/usr/bin/ant` on Redhat Linux systems will not work for compiling &FindBugs;. We recommend you install a binary distribution of &Ant; downloaded from the &Ant; website. Make sure that when you run &Ant; your JAVA_HOME environment variable points to the directory in which you installed JDK 1.5 (or later).

If you want to be able to generate formatted versions of the &FindBugs; documentation, you will also need the following software:

- The DocBook XSL Stylesheets. These are required to convert the &FindBugs; manual into HTML format.

- The &Saxon; XSLT Processor. (Also required for converting the &FindBugs; manual to HTML.)

### Extracting the Source Distribution

After you download the source distribution, you'll need to extract it into a working directory. A typical command to do this is:

    $ unzip findbugs-@VERSION@-source.zip

### Modifying `local.properties`

If you intend to build the FindBugs documentation, you will need to modify the `local.properties` file used by the &Ant; `build.xml` file to build &FindBugs;. If you do not want to build the FindBugs documentation, then you can ignore this file.

The `local.properties` overrides definitions in the `build.properties` file. The `build.properties` file looks something like this:

    # User Configuration:
    # This section must be modified to reflect your system.

    local.software.home     =/export/home/daveho/linux

    # Set this to the directory containing the DocBook Modular XSL Stylesheets
    #  from http://docbook.sourceforge.net/projects/xsl/

    xsl.stylesheet.home     =${local.software.home}/docbook/docbook-xsl-1.71.1

    # Set this to the directory where Saxon (http://saxon.sourceforge.net/)
    # is installed.

    saxon.home              =${local.software.home}/java/saxon-6.5.5

The `xsl.stylesheet.home` property specifies the full path to the directory where you have installed the DocBook Modular XSL Stylesheets. You only need to specify this property if you will be generating the &FindBugs; documentation.

The `saxon.home` property is the full path to the directory where you installed the &Saxon; XSLT Processor. You only need to specify this property if you will be generating the &FindBugs; documentation.

### Running &Ant;

Once you have extracted the source distribution, made sure that &Ant; is installed, modified `build.properties` (optional), and configured the tools (such as &Saxon;), you are ready to build &FindBugs;. Invoking &Ant; is a simple matter of running the command

    $ ant target

where target is one of the following:

`build`

  This target compiles the code for &FindBugs;. It is the default target.

`docs`

  This target formats the documentation. (It also compiles some of the source code as a side-effect.)

`runjunit`

  This target compiles and runs the internal JUnit tests included in &FindBugs;. It will print an error message if any unit tests fail.

`bindist`

  Builds a binary distribution of &FindBugs;. The target creates both `.zip` and `.tar.gz` archives.

After running an &Ant; command, you should see output similar to the following (after some other messages regarding the tasks that &Ant; is running):

    BUILD SUCCESSFUL
    Total time: 17 seconds

### Running &FindBugs;™ from a source directory

The &Ant; build script for &FindBugs; is written such that after building the `build` target, the working directory is set up just like a binary distribution. So, the information about running &FindBugs; in applies to source distributions, too.

## Running &FindBugs;™

&FindBugs; has two user interfaces: a graphical user interface (GUI) and a command line user interface. This chapter describes how to run each of these user interfaces.

This chapter is in the process of being re-written. The rewrite is not complete yet.

### Quick Start

If you are running &FindBugs; on a Windows system, double-click on the file `&FBHomeWin;\lib\findbugs.jar` to start the &FindBugs; GUI.

On a Unix, Linux, or Mac OS X system, run the `&FBHome;/bin/findbugs` script, or run the command

    java -jar &FBHome;/lib/findbugs.jar

to run the &FindBugs; GUI.

Refer to for information on how to use the GUI.

### Executing &FindBugs;

This section describes how to invoke the &FindBugs; program. There are two ways to invoke &FindBugs;: directly, or using a wrapper script.

#### Direct invocation of &FindBugs;

The preferred method of running &FindBugs; is to directly execute `&FBHome;/lib/findbugs.jar` using the `-jar` command line switch of the JVM (`java`) executable. (Versions of &FindBugs; prior to 1.3.5 required a wrapper script to invoke &FindBugs;.)

The general syntax of invoking &FindBugs; directly is the following:

        java [JVM arguments] -jar &FBHome;/lib/findbugs.jar options...

##### Choosing the User Interface

The first command line option chooses the &FindBugs; user interface to execute. Possible values are:

- `-gui`: runs the graphical user interface (GUI)

- `-textui`: runs the command line user interface

- `-version`: displays the &FindBugs; version number

- `-help`: displays help information for the &FindBugs; command line user interface

- `-gui1`: executes the original (obsolete) &FindBugs; graphical user interface

##### Java Virtual Machine (JVM) arguments

Several Java Virtual Machine arguments are useful when invoking &FindBugs;.

`-XmxNNm`

  Set the maximum Java heap size to NN megabytes. &FindBugs; generally requires a large amount of memory. For a very large project, using 1500 megabytes is not unusual.

`-Dname=value`

  Set a Java system property. For example, you might use the argument `-Duser.language=ja` to display GUI messages in Japanese.

#### Invocation of &FindBugs; using a wrapper script

Another way to run &FindBugs; is to use a wrapper script.

On Unix-like systems, use the following command to invoke the wrapper script:

    $ &FBHome;/bin/findbugs options...

On Windows systems, the command to invoke the wrapper script is

    C:\My Directory>&FBHomeWin;\bin\findbugs.bat options...

On both Unix-like and Windows systems, you can simply add the `$FINDBUGS_HOME/bin` directory to your `PATH` environment variable and then invoke FindBugs using the `findbugs` command.

##### Wrapper script command line options

The &FindBugs; wrapper scripts support the following command-line options. Note that these command line options are not handled by the &FindBugs; program per se; rather, they are handled by the wrapper script.

`-jvmArgs args`

  Specifies arguments to pass to the JVM. For example, you might want to set a JVM property:

      $ findbugs -textui -jvmArgs "-Duser.language=ja" myApp.jar

`-javahome directory`

  Specifies the directory containing the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) to use to execute &FindBugs;.

`-maxHeap size`

  Specifies the maximum Java heap size in megabytes. The default is 256. More memory may be required to analyze very large programs or libraries.

`-debug`

  Prints a trace of detectors run and classes analyzed to standard output. Useful for troubleshooting unexpected analysis failures.

`-property` name=value

  This option sets a system property. &FindBugs; uses system properties to configure analysis options. See . You can use this option multiple times in order to set multiple properties. Note: In most versions of Windows, the name=value string must be in quotes.

### Command-line Options

This section describes the command line options supported by &FindBugs;. These command line options may be used when invoking &FindBugs; directly, or when using a wrapper script.

#### Common command-line options

These options may be used with both the GUI and command-line interfaces.

`-effort:min`

  This option disables analyses that increase precision but also increase memory consumption. You may want to try this option if you find that &FindBugs; runs out of memory, or takes an unusually long time to complete its analysis.

`-effort:max`

  Enable analyses which increase precision and find more bugs, but which may require more memory and take more time to complete.

`-project` project

  Specify a project to be analyzed. The project file you specify should be one that was created using the GUI interface. It will typically end in the extension `.fb` or `.fbp`.

#### GUI Options

These options are only accepted by the Graphical User Interface.

`-look:` plastic|gtk|native

  Set Swing look and feel.

#### Text UI Options

These options are only accepted by the Text User Interface.

`-sortByClass`

  Sort reported bug instances by class name.

`-include` filterFile.xml

  Only report bug instances that match the filter specified by filterFile.xml. See .

`-exclude` filterFile.xml

  Report all bug instances except those matching the filter specified by filterFile.xml. See .

`-onlyAnalyze` com.foobar.MyClass,com.foobar.mypkg.*

  Restrict analysis to find bugs to given comma-separated list of classes and packages. Unlike filtering, this option avoids running analysis on classes and packages that are not explicitly matched: for large projects, this may greatly reduce the amount of time needed to run the analysis. (However, some detectors may produce inaccurate results if they aren't run on the entire application.) Classes should be specified using their full classnames (including package), and packages should be specified in the same way they would in a Java `import` statement to import all classes in the package (i.e., add `.*` to the full name of the package). Replace `.*` with `.-` to also analyze all subpackages.

`-low`

  Report all bugs.

`-medium`

  Report medium and high priority bugs. This is the default setting.

`-high`

  Report only high priority bugs.

`-relaxed`

  Relaxed reporting mode. For many detectors, this option suppresses the heuristics used to avoid reporting false positives.

`-xml`

  Produce the bug reports as XML. The XML data produced may be viewed in the GUI at a later time. You may also specify this option as `-xml:withMessages`; when this variant of the option is used, the XML output will contain human-readable messages describing the warnings contained in the file. XML files generated this way are easy to transform into reports.

`-html`

  Generate HTML output. By default, &FindBugs; will use the `default.xsl` XSLT stylesheet to generate the HTML: you can find this file in `findbugs.jar`, or in the &FindBugs; source or binary distributions. Variants of this option include `-html:plain.xsl`, `-html:fancy.xsl` and `-html:fancy-hist.xsl`. The `plain.xsl` stylesheet does not use Javascript or DOM, and may work better with older web browsers, or for printing. The `fancy.xsl` stylesheet uses DOM and Javascript for navigation and CSS for visual presentation. The `fancy-hist.xsl` an evolution of `fancy.xsl` stylesheet. It makes an extensive use of DOM and Javascript for dynamically filtering the lists of bugs.

  If you want to specify your own XSLT stylesheet to perform the transformation to HTML, specify the option as `-html:myStylesheet.xsl`, where myStylesheet.xsl is the filename of the stylesheet you want to use.

`-emacs`

  Produce the bug reports in Emacs format.

`-xdocs`

  Produce the bug reports in xdoc XML format for use with Apache Maven.

`-output` filename

  Produce the output in the specified file.

`-outputFile` filename

  This argument is deprecated. Use `-output` instead.

`-nested`[:true|false]

  This option enables or disables scanning of nested jar and zip files found in the list of files and directories to be analyzed. By default, scanning of nested jar/zip files is enabled. To disable it, add `-nested:false` to the command line arguments.

`-auxclasspath` classpath

  Set the auxiliary classpath for analysis. This classpath should include all jar files and directories containing classes that are part of the program being analyzed but you do not want to have analyzed for bugs.

`-auxclasspathFromInput`

  Read the auxiliary classpath for analysis from standard input, each line adds new entry to the auxiliary classpath for analysis.

`-auxclasspathFromFile` filepath

  Read the auxiliary classpath for analysis from file, each line adds new entry to the auxiliary classpath for analysis.

`-analyzeFromFile` filepath

  Read the files to analyze from file, each line adds new entry to the classpath for analysis.

`-userPrefs` edu.umd.cs.findbugs.core.prefs

  Set the path of the user preferences file to use, which might override some of the options abobe. Specifying `userPrefs` as first argument would mean some later options will override them, as last argument would mean they will override some previous options). This rationale behind this option is to reuse FindBugs Eclipse project settings for command line execution.

## Using the &FindBugs; GUI

This chapter describes how to use the &FindBugs; graphical user interface (GUI).

### Creating a Project

After you have started &FindBugs; using the `findbugs` command, choose the File New Project menu item. You will see a dialog which looks like this:

Use the "Add" button next to "Classpath to analyze" to select a Java archive file (zip, jar, ear, or war file) or directory containing java classes to analyze for bugs. You may add multiple archives/directories.

You can also add the source directories which contain the source code for the Java archives you are analyzing. This will enable &FindBugs; to highlight the source code which contains a possible error. The source directories you add should be the roots of the Java package hierarchy. For example, if your application is contained in the `org.foobar.myapp` package, you should add the parent directory of the `org` directory to the source directory list for the project.

Another optional step is to add additional Jar files or directories as "Auxiliary classpath locations" entries. You should do this if the archives and directories you are analyzing have references to other classes which are not included in the analyzed archives/directories and are not in the standard runtime classpath. Some of the bug pattern detectors in &FindBugs; make use of class hierarchy information, so you will get more accurate results if the entire class hierarchy is available which &FindBugs; performs its analysis.

### Running the Analysis

Once you have added all of the archives, directories, and source directories, click the "Analyze" button to analyze the classes contained in the Jar files. Note that for a very large program on an older computer, this may take quite a while (tens of minutes). A recent computer with ample memory will typically be able to analyze a large program in only a few minutes.

### Browsing Results

When the analysis completes, you will see a screen like the following:

The upper left-hand pane of the window shows the bug tree; this is a hierarchical representation of all of the potential bugs detected in the analyzed Jar files.

When you select a particular bug instance in the top pane, you will see a description of the bug in the "Details" tab of the bottom pane. In addition, the source code pane on the upper-right will show the program source code where the potential bug occurs, if source is available. In the above example, the bug is a stream object that is not closed. The source code window highlights the line where the stream object is created.

You may add a textual annotations to bug instances. To do so, type them into the text box just below the hierarchical view. You can type any information which you would like to record. When you load and save bug results files, the annotations are preserved.

### Saving and Opening

You may use the File Save as... menu option to save your work. To save your work, including the jar file lists you specified and all bug results, choose "FindBugs analysis results (.xml)" from the drop-down list in the "Save as..." dialog. There are also options for saving just the jar file lists ("FindBugs project file (.fbp)") or just the results ("FindBugs analysis file (.fba)"). A saved file may be loaded with the File Open... menu option.

## Using the &FindBugs;™ &Ant; task

This chapter describes how to integrate &FindBugs; into a build script for &Ant;, which is a popular Java build and deployment tool. Using the &FindBugs; &Ant; task, your build script can automatically run &FindBugs; on your Java code.

The &Ant; task was generously contributed by Mike Fagan.

### Installing the &Ant; task

To install the &Ant; task, simply copy `&FBHome;/lib/findbugs-ant.jar` into the `lib` subdirectory of your &Ant; installation.

It is strongly recommended that you use the &Ant; task with the version of &FindBugs; it was included with. We do not guarantee that the &Ant; task Jar file will work with any version of &FindBugs; other than the one it was included with.

### Modifying build.xml

To incorporate &FindBugs; into `build.xml` (the build script for &Ant;), you first need to add a task definition. This should appear as follows:

      <taskdef name="findbugs" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.FindBugsTask"/>

The task definition specifies that when a `findbugs` element is seen in `build.xml`, it should use the indicated class to execute the task.

After you have added the task definition, you can define a target which uses the `findbugs` task. Here is an example which could be added to the `build.xml` for the Apache BCEL library.

      <property name="findbugs.home" value="/export/home/daveho/work/findbugs" />

      <target name="findbugs" depends="jar">
        <findbugs home="${findbugs.home}"
                  output="xml"
                  outputFile="bcel-fb.xml" >
          <auxClasspath path="${basedir}/lib/Regex.jar" />
          <sourcePath path="${basedir}/src/java" />
          <class location="${basedir}/bin/bcel.jar" />
        </findbugs>
      </target>

The `findbugs` element must have the `home` attribute set to the directory in which &FindBugs; is installed; in other words, &FBHome;. See .

This target will execute &FindBugs; on `bcel.jar`, which is the Jar file produced by BCEL's build script. (By making it depend on the "jar" target, we ensure that the library is fully compiled before running &FindBugs; on it.) The output of &FindBugs; will be saved in XML format to a file called `bcel-fb.xml`. An auxiliary Jar file, `Regex.jar`, is added to the aux classpath, because it is referenced by the main BCEL library. A source path is specified so that the saved bug data will have accurate references to the BCEL source code.

### Executing the task

Here is an example of invoking &Ant; from the command line, using the `findbugs` target defined above.

      [daveho@noir]$ ant findbugs
      Buildfile: build.xml

      init:

      compile:

      examples:

      jar:

      findbugs:
       [findbugs] Running FindBugs...
       [findbugs] Bugs were found
       [findbugs] Output saved to bcel-fb.xml

      BUILD SUCCESSFUL
      Total time: 35 seconds

In this case, because we saved the bug results in an XML file, we can use the &FindBugs; GUI to view the results; see .

### Parameters

This section describes the parameters that may be specified when using the &FindBugs; task.

`class`

  A optional nested element specifying which classes to analyze. The `class` element must specify a `location` attribute which names the archive file (jar, zip, etc.), directory, or class file to be analyzed. Multiple `class` elements may be specified as children of a single `findbugs` element.

  In addition to or instead of specifying a `class` element, the &FindBugs; task can contain one or more `fileset` element(s) that specify files to be analyzed. For example, you might use a fileset to specify that all of the jar files in a directory should be analyzed.

`auxClasspath`

  An optional nested element which specifies a classpath (Jar files or directories) containing classes used by the analyzed library or application, but which you don't want to analyze. It is specified the same way as &Ant;'s `classpath` element for the Java task.

`sourcePath`

  An optional nested element which specifies a source directory path containing source files used to compile the Java code being analyzed. By specifying a source path, any generated XML bug output will have complete source information, which allows later viewing in the GUI.

`home`

  A required attribute. It must be set to the name of the directory where &FindBugs; is installed.

`quietErrors`

  An optional boolean attribute. If true, reports of serious analysis errors and missing classes will be suppressed in the &FindBugs; output. Default is false.

`reportLevel`

  An optional attribute. It specifies the confidence/priority threshold for reporting issues. If set to "low", confidence is not used to filter bugs. If set to "medium" (the default), low confidence issues are supressed. If set to "high", only high confidence bugs are reported.

`output`

  Optional attribute. It specifies the output format. If set to "xml" (the default), output is in XML format. If set to "xml:withMessages", output is in XML format augmented with human-readable messages. (You should use this format if you plan to generate a report using an XSL stylesheet.) If set to "html", output is in HTML formatted (default stylesheet is default.xsl). If set to "text", output is in ad-hoc text format. If set to "emacs", output is in Emacs error message format. If set to "xdocs", output is xdoc XML for use with Apache Maven.

`stylesheet`

  Optional attribute. It specifies the stylesheet to use to generate html output when the output is set to html. Stylesheets included in the FindBugs distribution include default.xsl, fancy.xsl, fancy-hist.xsl, plain.xsl, and summary.xsl. The default value, if no stylesheet attribute is provided, is default.xsl.

`sort`

  Optional attribute. If the `output` attribute is set to "text", then the `sort` attribute specifies whether or not reported bugs are sorted by class. Default is true.

`outputFile`

  Optional attribute. If specified, names the output file in which the &FindBugs; output will be saved. By default, the output is displayed directly by &Ant;.

`debug`

  Optional boolean attribute. If set to true, &FindBugs; prints diagnostic information about which classes are being analyzed, and which bug pattern detectors are being run. Default is false.

`effort`

  Set the analysis effort level. The value specified should be one of `min`, `default`, or `max`. See for more information about setting the analysis level.

`conserveSpace`

  Synonym for effort="min".

`workHard`

  Synonym for effort="max".

`visitors`

  Optional attribute. It specifies a comma-separated list of bug detectors which should be run. The bug detectors are specified by their class names, without any package qualification. By default, all detectors which are not disabled by default are run.

`omitVisitors`

  Optional attribute. It specifies a comma-separated list of bug detectors. It is like the `visitors` attribute, except it specifies detectors which will not be run.

`chooseVisitors`

  Optional attribute. It specifies a comma-separated list of bug detectors prefixed with "+" or "-" to selectively enable/disable them.

`excludeFilter`

  Optional attribute. It specifies the filename of a filter specifying bugs to exclude from being reported. See .

`includeFilter`

  Optional attribute. It specifies the filename of a filter specifying which bugs are reported. See .

`projectFile`

  Optional attribute. It specifies the name of a project file. Project files are created by the &FindBugs; GUI, and specify classes, aux classpath entries, and source directories. By naming a project, you don't need to specify any `class` elements, nor do you need to specify `auxClasspath` or `sourcePath` attributes. See for how to create a project.

`jvmargs`

  Optional attribute. It specifies any arguments that should be passed to the Java virtual machine used to run &FindBugs;. You may need to use this attribute to specify flags to increase the amount of memory the JVM may use if you are analyzing a very large program.

`systemProperty`

  Optional nested element. If specified, defines a system property. The `name` attribute specifies the name of the system property, and the `value` attribute specifies the value of the system property.

`timeout`

  Optional attribute. It specifies the amount of time, in milliseconds, that the Java process executing &FindBugs; may run before it is assumed to be hung and is terminated. The default is 600,000 milliseconds, which is ten minutes. Note that for very large programs, &FindBugs; may require more than ten minutes to complete its analysis.

`failOnError`

  Optional boolean attribute. Whether to abort the build process if there is an error running &FindBugs;. Defaults to "false"

`errorProperty`

  Optional attribute which specifies the name of a property that will be set to "true" if an error occurs while running &FindBugs;.

`warningsProperty`

  Optional attribute which specifies the name of a property that will be set to "true" if any warnings are reported by &FindBugs; on the analyzed program.

`userPreferencesFile`

  Optional attribute. Set the path of the user preferences file to use, which might override some of the options abobe. Specifying `userPreferencesFile` as first argument would mean some later options will override them, as last argument would mean they will override some previous options). This rationale behind this option is to reuse FindBugs Eclipse project settings for command line execution.

`nested`

  Optional attribute which enables or disables scanning of nested jar and zip files found in the list of files and directories to be analyzed. By default, scanning of nested jar/zip files is enabled.

`setExitCode`

  Optional boolean attribute. Whether the exit code will be returned to the main ant job. Defaults to "true".

## Using the &FindBugs;™ Eclipse plugin

The FindBugs Eclipse plugin allows &FindBugs; to be used within the Eclipse IDE. The FindBugs Eclipse plugin was generously contributed by Peter Friese. Phil Crosby and Andrey Loskutov contributed major improvements to the plugin.

### Requirements

To use the &FindBugs; Plugin for Eclipse, you need Eclipse 3.3 or later, and JRE/JDK 1.5 or later.

### Installation

We provide update sites that allow you to automatically install FindBugs into Eclipse and also query and install updates. There are three different update sites

FindBugs Eclipse update sites

http://findbugs.cs.umd.edu/eclipse/

  Only provides official releases of FindBugs.

http://findbugs.cs.umd.edu/eclipse-candidate/

  Provides official releases and release candidates of FindBugs.

http://findbugs.cs.umd.edu/eclipse-daily/

  Provides the daily build of FindBugs. No testing other than that it compiles.

You can also manually download the plugin from the following link: @DOWNLOADS_WEBSITE@/edu.umd.cs.findbugs.plugin.eclipse_@ECLIPSE_UI_VERSION@.zip?download. Extract it in Eclipse's "plugins" subdirectory. (So <eclipse_install_dir>/plugins/edu.umd.cs.findbugs.plugin.eclipse_@ECLIPSE_UI_VERSION@/findbugs.png should be the path to the &FindBugs; logo.)

Once the plugin is extracted, start Eclipse and choose Help About Eclipse Platform Plug-in Details . You should find a plugin called "FindBugs Plug-in" provided by "FindBugs Project".

### Using the Plugin

To get started, right click on a Java project in Package Explorer, and select the option labeled "Find Bugs". &FindBugs; will run, and problem markers (displayed in source windows, and also in the Eclipse Problems view) will point to locations in your code which have been identified as potential instances of bug patterns.

You can also run &FindBugs; on existing java archives (jar, ear, zip, war etc). Simply create an empty Java project and attach archives to the project classpath. Having that, you can now right click the archive node in Package Explorer and select the option labeled "Find Bugs". If you additionally configure the source code locations for the binaries, &FindBugs; will also link the generated warnings to the right source files.

You may customize how &FindBugs; runs by opening the Properties dialog for a Java project, and choosing the "Findbugs" property page. Options you may choose include:

- Enable or disable the "Run FindBugs Automatically" checkbox. When enabled, FindBugs will run every time you modify a Java class within the project.

- Choose minimum warning priority and enabled bug categories. These options will choose which warnings are shown. For example, if you select the "Medium" warning priority, only Medium and High priority warnings will be shown. Similarly, if you uncheck the "Style" checkbox, no warnings in the Style category will be displayed.

- Select detectors. The table allows you to select which detectors you want to enable for your project.

### Extending the Eclipse Plugin (since 2.0.0)

Eclipse plugin supports contribution of custom &FindBugs; detectors (see also AddingDetectors.txt for more information). There are two ways to contribute custom plugins to the Eclipse:

- Existing standard &FindBugs; detector packages can be configured via Window Preferences Java FindBugs Misc. Settings Custom Detectors . Simply specify there locations of any additional plugin libraries.

  The benefit of this solution is that already existing detector packages can be used "as is", and that you can quickly verify the quality of third party detectors. The drawback is that you have to apply this settings in each new Eclipse workspace, and this settings can't be shared between team members.

- It is possible to contribute custom detectors via standard Eclipse extensions mechanism.

  Please check the documentation of the findBugsEclipsePlugin/schema/detectorPlugins.exsd extension point how to update the plugin.xml. Existing &FindBugs; detector plugins can be easily "extended" to be full featured &FindBugs; AND Eclipse detector plugins. Usually you only need to add META-INF/MANIFEST.MF and plugin.xml to the jar and update your build scripts to not to override the MANIFEST.MF during the build.

  The benefit of this solution is that for given (shared) Eclipse installation each team member has exactly same detectors set, and there is no need to configure anything anymore. The (really small) precondition is that you have to convert your existing detectors package to the valid Eclipse plugin. You can do this even for third-party detector packages. Another major differentiator is the ability to extend the default FindBugs classpath at runtime with required third party libraries (see AddingDetectors.txt for more information).

### Troubleshooting

This section lists common problems with the plugin and (if known) how to resolve them.

- If you see OutOfMemory error dialogs after starting &FindBugs; analysis in Eclipse, please increase JVM available memory: change eclipse.ini and add the lines below to the end of the file:

          -vmargs
          -Xmx1000m

  Important: the configuration arguments starting with the line "-vmargs" must be last lines in the eclipse.ini file, and only one argument per line is allowed!

- If you do not see any &FindBugs; problem markers (in your source windows or in the Problems View), you may need to change your Problems View filter settings. See http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/FAQ.html#q7 for more information.

## Filter Files

Filter files may be used to include or exclude bug reports for particular classes and methods. This chapter explains how to use filter files.

### Introduction to Filter Files

Conceptually, a filter matches bug instances against a set of criteria. By defining a filter, you can select bug instances for special treatment; for example, to exclude or include them in a report.

A filter file is an XML document with a top-level `FindBugsFilter` element which has some number of `Match` elements as children. Each `Match` element represents a predicate which is applied to generated bug instances. Usually, a filter will be used to exclude bug instances. For example:

    $ findbugs -textui -exclude myExcludeFilter.xml myApp.jar

However, a filter could also be used to select bug instances to specifically report:

    $ findbugs -textui -include myIncludeFilter.xml myApp.jar

`Match` elements contain children, which are conjuncts of the predicate. In other words, each of the children must be true for the predicate to be true.

### Types of Match clauses

`<Bug>`

  This element specifies a particular bug pattern or patterns to match. The `pattern` attribute is a comma-separated list of bug pattern types. You can find the bug pattern types for particular warnings by looking at the output produced by the `-xml` output option (the `type` attribute of `BugInstance` elements), or from the bug descriptions document.

  For more coarse-grained matching, use `code` attribute. It takes a comma-separated list of bug abbreviations. For most-coarse grained matching use `category` attriute, that takes a comma separated list of bug category names: `CORRECTNESS`, `MT_CORRECTNESS`, `BAD_PRACTICICE`, `PERFORMANCE`, `STYLE`.

  If more than one of the attributes mentioned above are specified on the same `<Bug>` element, all bug patterns that match either one of specified pattern names, or abreviations, or categories will be matched.

  As a backwards compatibility measure, `<BugPattern>` and `<BugCode>` elements may be used instead of `<Bug>` element. Each of these uses a `name` attribute for specifying accepted values list. Support for these elements may be removed in a future release.

`<Confidence>`

  This element matches warnings with a particular bug confidence. The `value` attribute should be an integer value: 1 to match high-confidence warnings, 2 to match normal-confidence warnings, or 3 to match low-confidence warnings. <Confidence> replaced <Priority> in 2.0.0 release.

`<Priority>`

  Same as `<Confidence>`, exists for backward compatibility.

`<Rank>`

  This element matches warnings with a particular bug rank. The `value` attribute should be an integer value between 1 and 20, where 1 to 4 are scariest, 5 to 9 scary, 10 to 14 troubling, and 15 to 20 of concern bugs.

`<Package>`

  This element matches warnings associated with classes within the package specified using `name` attribute. Nested packages are not included (along the lines of Java import statement). However matching multiple packages can be achieved easily using regex name match.

`<Class>`

  This element matches warnings associated with a particular class. The `name` attribute is used to specify the exact or regex match pattern for the class name. The `role` attribute is the class role.

  As a backward compatibility measure, instead of element of this type, you can use `class` attribute on a `Match` element to specify exact an class name or `classregex` attribute to specify a regular expression to match the class name against.

  If the `Match` element contains neither a `Class` element, nor a `class` / `classregex` attribute, the predicate will apply to all classes. Such predicate is likely to match more bug instances than you want, unless it is refined further down with apropriate method or field predicates.

`<Source>`

  This element matches warnings associated with a particular source file. The `name` attribute is used to specify the exact or regex match pattern for the source file name.

`<Method>`

  This element specifies a method. The `name` is used to specify the exact or regex match pattern for the method name. The `params` attribute is a comma-separated list of the types of the method's parameters. The `returns` attribute is the method's return type. The `role` attribute is the method role. In `params` and `returns`, class names must be fully qualified. (E.g., "java.lang.String" instead of just "String".) If one of the latter attributes is specified the other is required for creating a method signature. Note that you can provide either `name` attribute or `params` and `returns` attributes or all three of them. This way you can provide various kinds of name and signature based matches.

`<Field>`

  This element specifies a field. The `name` attribute is is used to specify the exact or regex match pattern for the field name. You can also filter fields according to their signature - use `type` attribute to specify fully qualified type of the field. You can specify eiter or both of these attributes in order to perform name / signature based matches. The `role` attribute is the field role.

`<Local>`

  This element specifies a local variable. The `name` attribute is is used to specify the exact or regex match pattern for the local variable name. Local variables are variables defined within a method.

`<Or>`

  This element combines `Match` clauses as disjuncts. I.e., you can put two `Method` elements in an `Or` clause in order to match either method.

`<And>`

  This element combines `Match` clauses which both must evaluate to true. I.e., you can put `Bug` and `Confidence` elements in an `And` clause in order to match specific bugs with given confidence only.

`<Not>`

  This element inverts the included child `Match`. I.e., you can put a `Bug` element in a `Not` clause in order to match any bug excluding the given one.

### Java element name matching

If the `name` attribute of `Class`, `Source`, `Method` or `Field` starts with the ~ character the rest of attribute content is interpreted as a Java regular expression that is matched against the names of the Java element in question.

Note that the pattern is matched against whole element name and therefore .* clauses need to be used at pattern beginning and/or end to perform substring matching.

See `java.util.regex.Pattern` documentation for pattern syntax.

### Caveats

`Match` clauses can only match information that is actually contained in the bug instances. Every bug instance has a class, so in general, excluding bugs by class will work.

Some bug instances have two (or more) classes. For example, the DE (dropped exception) bugs report both the class containing the method where the dropped exception happens, and the class which represents the type of the dropped exception. Only the first (primary) class is matched against `Match` clauses. So, for example, if you want to suppress IC (initialization circularity) reports for classes "com.foobar.A" and "com.foobar.B", you would use two `Match` clauses:

       <Match>
          <Class name="com.foobar.A" />
          <Bug code="IC" />
       </Match>

       <Match>
          <Class name="com.foobar.B" />
          <Bug code="IC" />
       </Match>

By explicitly matching both classes, you ensure that the IC bug instance will be matched regardless of which class involved in the circularity happens to be listed first in the bug instance. (Of course, this approach might accidentally supress circularities involving "com.foobar.A" or "com.foobar.B" and a third class.)

Many kinds of bugs report what method they occur in. For those bug instances, you can put `Method` clauses in the `Match` element and they should work as expected.

### Examples

1. Match all bug reports for a class.

         <Match>
           <Class name="com.foobar.MyClass" />
         </Match>

2. Match certain tests from a class by specifying their abbreviations.

         <Match>
           <Class name="com.foobar.MyClass"/ >
           <Bug code="DE,UrF,SIC" />
         </Match>

3. Match certain tests from all classes by specifying their abbreviations.

         <Match>
           <Bug code="DE,UrF,SIC" />
         </Match>

4. Match certain tests from all classes by specifying their category.

         <Match>
           <Bug category="PERFORMANCE" />
         </Match>

5. Match bug types from specified methods of a class by their abbreviations.

         <Match>
           <Class name="com.foobar.MyClass" />
           <Or>
             <Method name="frob" params="int,java.lang.String" returns="void" />
             <Method name="blat" params="" returns="boolean" />
           </Or>
           <Bug code="DC" />
         </Match>

6. Match a particular bug pattern in a particular method.

        <!-- A method with an open stream false positive. -->
        <Match>
          <Class name="com.foobar.MyClass" />
          <Method name="writeDataToFile" />
          <Bug pattern="OS_OPEN_STREAM" />
        </Match>

7. Match a particular bug pattern with a given priority in a particular method.

        <!-- A method with a dead local store false positive (medium priority). -->
        <Match>
          <Class name="com.foobar.MyClass" />
          <Method name="someMethod" />
          <Bug pattern="DLS_DEAD_LOCAL_STORE" />
          <Priority value="2" />
        </Match>

8. Match minor bugs introduced by AspectJ compiler (you are probably not interested in these unless you are an AspectJ developer).

        <Match>
          <Class name="~.*\$AjcClosure\d+" />
          <Bug pattern="DLS_DEAD_LOCAL_STORE" />
          <Method name="run" />
        </Match>
        <Match>
          <Bug pattern="UUF_UNUSED_FIELD" />
          <Field name="~ajc\$.*" />
        </Match>

9. Match bugs in specific parts of the code base

        <!-- match unused fields warnings in Messages classes in all packages -->
        <Match>
          <Class name="~.*\.Messages" />
          <Bug code="UUF" />
        </Match>
        <!-- match mutable statics warnings in all internal packages -->
        <Match>
          <Package name="~.*\.internal" />
          <Bug code="MS" />
        </Match>
        <!-- match anonymoous inner classes warnings in ui package hierarchy -->
        <Match>
          <Package name="~com\.foobar\.fooproject\.ui.*" />
          <Bug pattern="SIC_INNER_SHOULD_BE_STATIC_ANON" />
        </Match>

10. Match bugs on fields or methods with specific signatures

        <!-- match System.exit(...) usage warnings in void main(String[]) methods in all classes -->
        <Match>
          <Method returns="void" name="main" params="java.lang.String[]" />
          <Bug pattern="DM_EXIT" />
        </Match>
        <!-- match UuF warnings on fields of type com.foobar.DebugInfo on all classes -->
        <Match>
          <Field type="com.foobar.DebugInfo" />
          <Bug code="UuF" />
        </Match>

11. Match bugs using the Not filter operator

    <!-- ignore all bugs in test classes, except for those bugs specifically relating to JUnit tests -->
    <!-- i.e. filter bug if ( classIsJUnitTest && ! bugIsRelatedToJUnit ) -->
    <Match>
      <!-- the Match filter is equivalent to a logical 'And' -->

      <Class name="~.*\.*Test" />
      <!-- test classes are suffixed by 'Test' -->

      <Not>
          <Bug code="IJU" /> <!-- 'IJU' is the code for bugs related to JUnit test code -->
      </Not>
    </Match>

12. Full exclusion filter file to match all classes generated from Groovy source files.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <FindBugsFilter>
    <Match>
        <Source name="~.*\.groovy" />
    </Match>
    </FindBugsFilter>

### Complete Example

    <FindBugsFilter>
         <Match>
           <Class name="com.foobar.ClassNotToBeAnalyzed" />
         </Match>

         <Match>
           <Class name="com.foobar.ClassWithSomeBugsMatched" />
           <Bug code="DE,UrF,SIC" />
         </Match>

         <!-- Match all XYZ violations. -->
         <Match>
           <Bug code="XYZ" />
         </Match>

         <!-- Match all doublecheck violations in these methods of "AnotherClass". -->
         <Match>
           <Class name="com.foobar.AnotherClass" />
           <Or>
             <Method name="nonOverloadedMethod" />
             <Method name="frob" params="int,java.lang.String" returns="void" />
             <Method name="blat" params="" returns="boolean" />
           </Or>
           <Bug code="DC" />
         </Match>

         <!-- A method with a dead local store false positive (medium priority). -->
         <Match>
           <Class name="com.foobar.MyClass" />
           <Method name="someMethod" />
           <Bug pattern="DLS_DEAD_LOCAL_STORE" />
           <Priority value="2" />
         </Match>

         <!-- All bugs in test classes, except for JUnit-specific bugs -->
         <Match>
          <Class name="~.*\.*Test" />
          <Not>
              <Bug code="IJU" />
          </Not>
         </Match>

    </FindBugsFilter>

## Analysis Properties

&FindBugs; allows several aspects of the analyses it performs to be customized. System properties are used to configure these options. This chapter describes the configurable analysis options.

The analysis options have two main purposes. First, they allow you to inform &FindBugs; about the meaning of methods in your application, so that it can produce more accurate results, or produce fewer false warnings. Second, they allow you to configure the precision of the analysis performed. Reducing analysis precision can save memory and analysis time, at the expense of missing some real bugs, or producing more false warnings.

The analysis options are set using the `-property` command line option. For example:

    $ findbugs -textui -property "cfg.noprune=true" myApp.jar

The list of configurable analysis properties is shown in .

Configurable Analysis Properties

Property Name | Value | Meaning
--- | --- | ---
findbugs.assertionmethods | Comma-separated list of fully qualified method names: e.g., "com.foo.MyClass.checkAssertion" | This property specifies the names of methods that are used to check program assertions. Specifying these methods allows the null pointer dereference bug detector to avoid reporting false warnings for values which are checked by assertion methods.
findbugs.de.comment | true or false | If true, the DroppedException detector scans source code for empty catch blocks for a comment, and if one is found, does not report a warning.
findbugs.maskedfields.locals | true or false | If true, emit low priority warnings for local variables which obscure fields. Default is false.
findbugs.nullderef.assumensp | true or false | not used (intention: If true, the null dereference detector assumes that any reference value returned from a method or passed to a method in a parameter might be null. Default is false. Note that enabling this property will very likely cause a large number of false warnings to be produced.)
findbugs.refcomp.reportAll | true or false | If true, all suspicious reference comparisons using the == and != operators are reported. If false, only one such warning is issued per method. Default is false.
findbugs.sf.comment | true or false | If true, the SwitchFallthrough detector will only report warnings for cases where the source code does not have a comment containing the words "fall" or "nobreak". (An accurate source path must be used for this feature to work correctly.) This helps find cases where the switch fallthrough is likely to be unintentional.

## Annotations

&FindBugs; supports several annotations to express the developer's intent so that FindBugs can issue warnings more appropriately. You need to use Java 5 to use annotations, and must place the annotations.jar and jsr305.jar files in the classpath while compiling your program.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.CheckForNull`

  `[Target]` Field, Method, Parameter

  The annotated element might be null, and uses of the element should check for null. When this annotation is applied to a method it applies to the method return value.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.CheckReturnValue`

  `[Target]` Method, Constructor

  `[Parameter]`

    `priority:`The priority of the warning (HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, IGNORE). Default value:MEDIUM.

    `explanation:`A textual explaination of why the return value should be checked. Default value:"".

  This annotation is used to denote a method whose return value should always be checked after invoking the method.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.DefaultAnnotation`

  `[Target]` Type, Package

  `[Parameter]`

    `value:`Annotation class objects. More than one class can be specified.

    `priority:`Default priority(HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, IGNORE). Default value:MEDIUM.

  Indicates that all members of the class or package should be annotated with the default value of the supplied annotation classes. This would be used for behavior annotations such as @NonNull, @CheckForNull, or @CheckReturnValue. In particular, you can use @DefaultAnnotation(NonNull.class) on a class or package, and then use @Nullable only on those parameters, methods or fields that you want to allow to be null.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.DefaultAnnotationForFields`

  `[Target]` Type, Package

  `[Parameter]`

    `value:`Annotation class objects. More than one class can be specified.

    `priority:`Default priority(HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, IGNORE). Default value:MEDIUM.

  This is same as the DefaultAnnotation except it only applys to fields.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.DefaultAnnotationForMethods`

  `[Target]` Type, Package

  `[Parameter]`

    `value:`Annotation class objects. More than one class can be specified.

    `priority:`Default priority(HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, IGNORE). Default value:MEDIUM.

  This is same as the DefaultAnnotation except it only applys to methods.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.DefaultAnnotationForParameters`

  `[Target]` Type, Package

  `[Parameter]`

    `value:`Annotation class objects. More than one class can be specified.

    `priority:`Default priority(HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, IGNORE). Default value:MEDIUM.

  This is same as the DefaultAnnotation except it only applys to method parameters.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.NonNull`

  `[Target]` Field, Method, Parameter

  The annotated element must not be null. Annotated fields must not be null after construction has completed. Annotated methods must have non-null return values.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.Nullable`

  `[Target]` Field, Method, Parameter

  The annotated element could be null under some circumstances. In general, this means developers will have to read the documentation to determine when a null value is acceptable and whether it is neccessary to check for a null value. FindBugs will treat the annotated items as though they had no annotation.

  In practice this annotation is useful only for overriding an overarching NonNull annotation.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.OverrideMustInvoke`

  `[Target]` Method

  `[Parameter]`

    `value:`Specify when the super invocation should be performed (FIRST, ANYTIME, LAST). Default value:ANYTIME.

  Used to annotate a method that, if overridden, must (or should) be invoke super in the overriding method. Examples of such methods include finalize() and clone(). The argument to the method indicates when the super invocation should occur: at any time, at the beginning of the overriding method, or at the end of the overriding method. (This anotation is not implmemented in FindBugs as of September 8, 2006).

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.PossiblyNull`

  This annotation is deprecated. Use CheckForNull instead.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.SuppressWarnings`

  `[Target]` Type, Field, Method, Parameter, Constructor, Package

  `[Parameter]`

    `value:`The name of the warning. More than one name can be specified.

    `justification:`Reason why the warning should be ignored. Default value:"".

  The set of warnings that are to be suppressed by the compiler in the annotated element. Duplicate names are permitted. The second and successive occurrences of a name are ignored. The presence of unrecognized warning names is not an error: Compilers must ignore any warning names they do not recognize. They are, however, free to emit a warning if an annotation contains an unrecognized warning name. Compiler vendors should document the warning names they support in conjunction with this annotation type. They are encouraged to cooperate to ensure that the same names work across multiple compilers.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.UnknownNullness`

  `[Target]` Field, Method, Parameter

  Used to indicate that the nullness of the target is unknown, or my vary in unknown ways in subclasses.

`edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.UnknownNullness`

  `[Target]` Field, Method, Parameter

  Used to indicate that the nullness of the target is unknown, or my vary in unknown ways in subclasses.

&FindBugs; also supports the following annotations:

- net.jcip.annotations.GuardedBy

- net.jcip.annotations.Immutable

- net.jcip.annotations.NotThreadSafe

- net.jcip.annotations.ThreadSafe

You can refer the JCIP annotation API documentation at Java Concurrency in Practice.

## Using rejarForAnalysis

If your project consists of many jarfiles or the jarfiles are scattered over many directories, you may wish to use the `rejarForAnalysis` script to make FindBugs invocation easier. The script collects many jarfiles and combines them into a single, large jarfile that can then be easily passed to FindBugs for analysis. This can be particularly useful in combination with the 'find' command on unix systems; e.g. `find . -name '*.jar' | xargs rejarForAnalysis` .

The `rejarForAnalysis` script can also be used to split a very large project up into a set of jarfiles with the project classfiles evenly divided between them. This is useful when running FindBugs on the entire project is not practical due to time or memory consumption. Instead of running FindBugs on the entire project, you may use `rejarForAnalysis` build one large, all-inclusive jarfile containing all classes, invoke `rejarForAnalysis` again to split the project into multiple jarfiles, then run FindBugs on each divided jarfiles in turn, specifying the the all-inclusive jarfile in the `-auxclasspath`.

These are the options accepted by the `rejarForAnalysis` script:

`-maxAge` days

  Maximum age in days (ignore jar files older than this).

`-inputFileList` filename

  Text file containing names of jar files.

`-maxClasses` num

  Maximum number of classes per analysis*.jar file.

`-prefix` class name prefix

  Prefix of class names that should be analyzed (e.g., edu.umd.cs.).

## Data mining of bugs with &FindBugs;™

FindBugs incorporates an ability to perform sophisticated queries on bug databases and track warnings across multiple versions of code being studied, allowing you to do things such as seeing when a bug was first introduced, examining just the warnings that have been introduced since the last release, or graphing the number of infinite recursive loops in your code over time.

These techniques all depend upon the XML format used by FindBugs for storing warnings. These XML files usually contain just the warnings from one particular analysis run, but they can also store the results from analyzing a sequence of software builds or versions.

Any FindBugs XML bug database contains a version name and timestamp. FindBugs tries to compute a timestamp from the timestamps of the files that are analyzed (e.g., the timestamp is intended to be the time the class files were generated, not analyzed). Each bug database also contains a version name. Both the version name and timestamp can be set manually using the `setBugDatabaseInfo` () command.

A multiversion bug database assigns a sequence number to each version of the analyzed code. These sequence numbers are simply successive integers, starting at 0 (e.g., a bug database for 4 versions of the code will contain versions 0..3). The bug database will also record the name and timestamp for each version. The `filterBugs` command allows you to refer to a version by sequence number, name or timestamp.

You can take a sequence (or pair) of single version bug databases and create from them a multiversion bug database, or combine a multiversion bug database with a sequence of later single-version bug databases.

Some of these commands can be invoked as ant tasks. See below for specifics on how to invoke them and what attributes and arguments they take. All of the examples assume that the `findbugs.lib` `refid` is set correctly. Here is one way to set it:

       <!-- findbugs task definition -->
       <property name="findbugs.home" value="/your/path/to/findbugs" />
       <path id="findbugs.lib">
          <fileset dir="${findbugs.home}/lib">
             <include name="findbugs-ant.jar"/>
          </fileset>
       </path>

### Commands

All tools for FindBugs data mining are can be invoked from the command line, and some of the more useful tools can also be invoked from an ant build file.

Briefly, the command-line tools are:

`unionBugs`

  combine the results from separate analysis of disjoint classes

`computeBugHistory`

  Merge bug warnings from multiple versions of analyzed code into a single multiversion bug database. This can either be used to add more versions to an existing multiversion database, or to create a multiversion database from a sequence of single version bug warning databases.

`setBugDatabaseInfo`

  Set information such as the revision name or timestamp in an XML bug database

`listBugDatabaseInfo`

  List information such as the revision name and timestamp for a list of XML bug databases

`filterBugs`

  Select a subset of a bug database

`mineBugHistory`

  Generate a tabular listing of the number of warnings in each version of a multiversion bug database

`defectDensity`

  List information about defect density (warnings per 1000 NCSS) for the entire project and each class and package

`convertXmlToText`

  Convert bug warnings in XML format to a textual one-line-per-bug format, or to HTML

#### unionBugs

If you have, for example, separately analyzing each jar file used in an application, you can use this command to combine the separately generated xml bug warning files into a single file containing all of the warnings.

Do not use this command to combine results from analyzing different versions of the same file; use `computeBugHistory` instead.

Specify the xml files on the command line. The result is sent to standard output.

#### computeBugHistory

Use this command to generate a bug database containing information from different builds or versions of software you are analyzing. History is taken from the first file provided as input; any following files should be single version bug databases (if they contain history, the history in those files will be ignored).

By default, output is written to the standard output.

This functionality may also can be accessed from ant. First create a taskdef for `computeBugHistory` in your build file:

    <taskdef name="computeBugHistory" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.ComputeBugHistoryTask">
        <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
    </taskdef>

Attributes for this ant task are listed in the following table. To specify input files, nest them inside with a `<datafile>` element. For example:

    <computeBugHistory home="${findbugs.home}" ...>
        <datafile name="analyze1.xml"/>
        <datafile name="analyze2.xml"/>
    </computeBugHistory>

Options for computeBugHistory command

Command-line option | Ant attribute | Meaning
--- | --- | ---
-output <file> | output="<file>" | save output in the named file (may also be an input file)
-overrideRevisionNames[:truth] | overrideRevisionNames="[true|false]" | override revision names for each version with names computed from the filenames
-noPackageMoves[:truth] | noPackageMoves="[true|false]" | if a class has moved to another package, treat warnings in that class as seperate
-preciseMatch[:truth] | preciseMatch="[true|false]" | require bug patterns to match precisely
-precisePriorityMatch[:truth] | precisePriorityMatch="[true|false]" | consider two warnings as the same only if priorities match exactly
-quiet[:truth] | quiet="[true|false]" | don't generate any output to standard out unless there is an error
-withMessages[:truth] | withMessages="[true|false]" | include human-readable messages describing the warnings in XML output

#### filterBugs

This command is used to select a subset of warnings from a FindBugs XML warning file and write the selected subset to a new FindBugs warning file.

This command takes a sequence of options, and either zero, one or two filenames of findbugs xml bug files on the command line.

If no file names are provided, the command reads from standard input and writes to standard output. If one file name is provided, it reads from the file and writes to standard output. If two file names are provided, it reads from the first and writes the output to the second file name.

This functionality may also can be accessed from ant. First create a taskdef for `filterBugs` in your build file:

    <taskdef name="filterBugs" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.FilterBugsTask">
        <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
    </taskdef>

Attributes for this ant task are listed in the following table. To specify an input file either use the input attribute or nest it inside the ant call with a `<datafile>` element. For example:

    <filterBugs home="${findbugs.home}" ...>
        <datafile name="analyze.xml"/>
    </filterBugs>

Options for filterBugs command

Command-line option | Ant attribute | Meaning
--- | --- | ---
| input="<file>" | use file as input
| output="<file>" | output results to file
-not | not="[true|false]" | reverse (all) switches for the filter
-withSource[:truth] | withSource="[true|false]" | only warnings for switch source is available
-exclude <filter file> | exclude="<filter file>" | exclude bugs matching given filter
-include <filter file> | include="<filter file>" | include only bugs matching given filter
-annotation <text> | annotation="<text>" | allow only warnings containing this text in a manual annotation
-after <when> | after="<when>" | allow only warnings that first occurred after this version
-before <when> | before="<when>" | allow only warnings that first occurred before this version
-first <when> | first="<when>" | allow only warnings that first occurred in this version
-last <when> | last="<when>" | allow only warnings that last occurred in this version
-fixed <when> | fixed="<when>" | allow only warnings that last occurred in the previous version (clobbers `-last`)
-present <when> | present="<when>" | allow only warnings present in this version
-absent <when> | absent="<when>" | allow only warnings absent in this version
-active[:truth] | active="[true|false]" | allow only warnings alive in the last sequence number
-introducedByChange[:truth] | introducedByChange="[true|false]" | allow only warnings introduced by a change of an existing class
-removedByChange[:truth] | removedByChange="[true|false]" | allow only warnings removed by a change of a persisting class
-newCode[:truth] | newCode="[true|false]" | allow only warnings introduced by the addition of a new class
-removedCode[:truth] | removedCode="[true|false]" | allow only warnings removed by removal of a class
-priority <level> | priority="<level>" | allow only warnings with this priority or higher
-maxRank <rank> | rank="[1..20]" | allow only warnings with this rank or lower
-class <pattern> | class="<class>" | allow only bugs whose primary class name matches this pattern
-bugPattern <pattern> | bugPattern="<pattern>" | allow only bugs whose type matches this pattern
-category <category> | category="<category>" | allow only warnings with a category that starts with this string
-designation <designation> | designation="<designation>" | allow only warnings with this designation (e.g., -designation SHOULD_FIX)
-withMessages[:truth] | withMessages="[true|false]" | the generated XML should contain textual messages

#### mineBugHistory

This command generates a table containing counts of the numbers of warnings in each version of a multiversion bug database.

This functionality may also can be accessed from ant. First create a taskdef for `mineBugHistory` in your build file:

    <taskdef name="mineBugHistory" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.MineBugHistoryTask">
        <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
    </taskdef>

Attributes for this ant task are listed in the following table. To specify an input file either use the `input` attribute or nest it inside the ant call with a `<datafile>` element. For example:

    <mineBugHistory home="${findbugs.home}" ...>
        <datafile name="analyze.xml"/>
    </mineBugHistory>

Options for mineBugHistory command

Command-line option | Ant attribute | Meaning
--- | --- | ---
| input="<file>" | use file as input
| output="<file>" | write output to file
-formatDates | formatDates="[true|false]" | render dates in textual form
-noTabs | noTabs="[true|false]" | delimit columns with groups of spaces instead of tabs (see below)
-summary | summary="[true|false]" | output terse summary of changes over the last ten entries

The `-noTabs` output can be easier to read from a shell with a fixed-width font. Because numeric columns are right-justified, spaces may precede the first column value. This option also causes `-formatDates` to render dates in terser format without embedded whitespace.

The table is a tab-separated (barring `-noTabs`) table with the following columns:

Columns in mineBugHistory output

Title | Meaning
--- | ---
seq | Sequence number (successive integers, starting at 0)
version | Version name
time | Release timestamp
classes | Number of classes analyzed
NCSS | Non Commenting Source Statements
added | Count of new warnings for a class that existed in the previous version
newCode | Count of new warnings for a class that did not exist in the previous version
fixed | Count of warnings removed from a class that remains in the current version
removed | Count of warnings in the previous version for a class that is not present in the current version
retained | Count of warnings that were in both the previous and current version
dead | Warnings that were present in earlier versions but in neither the current version or the immediately preceeding version
active | Total warnings present in the current version

#### defectDensity

This command lists information about defect density (warnings per 1000 NCSS) for the entire project and each class and package. It can either be invoked with no files specified on the command line (in which case it reads from standard input) or with one file specified on the command line.

It generates a table with the following columns, and with one row for the entire project, and one row for each package or class that contains at least 4 warnings.

Columns in defectDensity output

Title | Meaning
--- | ---
kind | project, package or class
name | The name of the project, package or class
density | Number of warnings generated per 1000 lines of NCSS.
bugs | Number of warnings
NCSS | Calculated number of NCSS

#### convertXmlToText

This command converts a warning collection in XML format to a text format with one line per warning, or to HTML.

This functionality may also can be accessed from ant. First create a taskdef for `convertXmlToText` in your build file:

    <taskdef name="convertXmlToText" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.ConvertXmlToTextTask">
        <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
    </taskdef>

Attributes for this ant task are listed in the following table.

Options for convertXmlToText command

Command-line option | Ant attribute | Meaning
--- | --- | ---
| input="<filename>" | use file as input
| output="<filename>" | output results to file
-longBugCodes | longBugCodes="[true|false]" | use the full bug pattern code instead of two-letter abbreviation
| format="text" | generate plain text output with one bug per line (command-line default)
-html[:stylesheet] | format="html:<stylesheet>" | generate output with specified stylesheet (see below), or default.xsl if unspecified

You may specify plain.xsl, default.xsl, fancy.xsl, fancy-hist.xsl, or your own XSL stylesheet for the -html/format option. Despite the name of this option, you may specify a stylesheet that emits something other than html. When applying a stylesheet other than those included with FindBugs (listed above), the -html/format option should be used with a path or URL to the stylesheet.

#### setBugDatabaseInfo

This command sets meta-information in a specified warning collection. It takes the following options:

This functionality may also can be accessed from ant. First create a taskdef for `setBugDatabaseInfo` in your build file:

    <taskdef name="setBugDatabaseInfo" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.SetBugDatabaseInfoTask">
        <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
    </taskdef>

Attributes for this ant task are listed in the following table. To specify an input file either use the `input` attribute or nest it inside the ant call with a `<datafile>` element. For example:

    <setBugDatabaseInfo home="${findbugs.home}" ...>
        <datafile name="analyze.xml"/>
    </setBugDatabaseInfo>

setBugDatabaseInfo Options

Command-line option | Ant attribute | Meaning
--- | --- | ---
| input="<file>" | use file as input
| output="<file>" | write output to file
-name <name> | name="<name>" | set name for (last) revision
-timestamp <when> | timestamp="<when>" | set timestamp for (last) revision
-source <directory> | source="<directory>" | add specified directory to the source search path
-findSource <directory> | findSource="<directory>" | find and add all relevant source directions contained within specified directory
-suppress <filter file> | suppress="<filter file>" | suppress warnings matched by this file (replaces previous suppressions)
-withMessages | withMessages="[true|false]" | add textual messages to XML
-resetSource | resetSource="[true|false]" | remove all source search paths

#### listBugDatabaseInfo

This command takes a list of zero or more xml bug database filenames on the command line. If zero file names are provided, it reads from standard input and does not generate a table header.

There is only one option: `-formatDates` renders dates in textual form.

The output is a table one row per bug database and the following columns:

listBugDatabaseInfo Columns

Column | Meaning
--- | ---
version | version name
time | Release timestamp
classes | Number of classes analyzed
NCSS | Non Commenting Source Statements analyzed
total | Total number of warnings of all kinds
high | Total number of high priority warnings of all kinds
medium | Total number of medium/normal priority warnings of all kinds
low | Total number of low priority warnings of all kinds
filename | filename of database

### Examples

#### Mining history using proveded shell scrips

In all of the following, the commands are given in a directory that contains directories jdk1.6.0-b12, jdk1.6.0-b13, ..., jdk1.6.0-b60.

You can use the command:

    computeBugHistory jdk1.6.0-b* | filterBugs -bugPattern IL_ | mineBugHistory -formatDates

to generate the following output:

    seq	version	time	classes	NCSS	added	newCode	fixed	removed	retained	dead	active
    0	jdk1.6.0-b12	"Thu Nov 11 09:07:20 EST 2004"	13128	811569	0	4	0	0	0	0	4
    1	jdk1.6.0-b13	"Thu Nov 18 06:02:06 EST 2004"	13128	811570	0	0	0	0	4	0	4
    2	jdk1.6.0-b14	"Thu Dec 02 06:12:26 EST 2004"	13145	811786	0	0	2	0	2	0	2
    3	jdk1.6.0-b15	"Thu Dec 09 06:07:04 EST 2004"	13174	811693	0	0	1	0	1	2	1
    4	jdk1.6.0-b16	"Thu Dec 16 06:21:28 EST 2004"	13175	811715	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    5	jdk1.6.0-b17	"Thu Dec 23 06:27:22 EST 2004"	13176	811974	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    6	jdk1.6.0-b19	"Thu Jan 13 06:41:16 EST 2005"	13176	812011	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    7	jdk1.6.0-b21	"Thu Jan 27 05:57:52 EST 2005"	13177	812173	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    8	jdk1.6.0-b23	"Thu Feb 10 05:44:36 EST 2005"	13179	812188	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    9	jdk1.6.0-b26	"Thu Mar 03 06:04:02 EST 2005"	13199	811770	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    10	jdk1.6.0-b27	"Thu Mar 10 04:48:38 EST 2005"	13189	812440	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    11	jdk1.6.0-b28	"Thu Mar 17 02:54:22 EST 2005"	13185	812056	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    12	jdk1.6.0-b29	"Thu Mar 24 03:09:20 EST 2005"	13117	809468	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    13	jdk1.6.0-b30	"Thu Mar 31 02:53:32 EST 2005"	13118	809501	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    14	jdk1.6.0-b31	"Thu Apr 07 03:00:14 EDT 2005"	13117	809572	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    15	jdk1.6.0-b32	"Thu Apr 14 02:56:56 EDT 2005"	13169	811096	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    16	jdk1.6.0-b33	"Thu Apr 21 02:46:22 EDT 2005"	13187	811942	0	0	0	0	1	3	1
    17	jdk1.6.0-b34	"Thu Apr 28 02:49:00 EDT 2005"	13195	813488	0	1	0	0	1	3	2
    18	jdk1.6.0-b35	"Thu May 05 02:49:04 EDT 2005"	13457	829837	0	0	0	0	2	3	2
    19	jdk1.6.0-b36	"Thu May 12 02:59:46 EDT 2005"	13462	831278	0	0	0	0	2	3	2
    20	jdk1.6.0-b37	"Thu May 19 02:55:08 EDT 2005"	13464	831971	0	0	0	0	2	3	2
    21	jdk1.6.0-b38	"Thu May 26 03:08:16 EDT 2005"	13564	836565	0	0	0	0	2	3	2
    22	jdk1.6.0-b39	"Fri Jun 03 03:10:48 EDT 2005"	13856	849992	0	1	0	0	2	3	3
    23	jdk1.6.0-b40	"Thu Jun 09 03:30:28 EDT 2005"	15972	959619	0	2	0	0	3	3	5
    24	jdk1.6.0-b41	"Thu Jun 16 03:19:22 EDT 2005"	15972	959619	0	0	0	0	5	3	5
    25	jdk1.6.0-b42	"Fri Jun 24 03:38:54 EDT 2005"	15966	958581	0	0	0	0	5	3	5
    26	jdk1.6.0-b43	"Thu Jul 14 03:09:34 EDT 2005"	16041	960544	0	0	0	0	5	3	5
    27	jdk1.6.0-b44	"Thu Jul 21 03:05:54 EDT 2005"	16041	960547	0	0	0	0	5	3	5
    28	jdk1.6.0-b45	"Thu Jul 28 03:26:10 EDT 2005"	16037	960606	0	0	1	0	4	3	4
    29	jdk1.6.0-b46	"Thu Aug 04 03:02:48 EDT 2005"	15936	951355	0	0	0	0	4	4	4
    30	jdk1.6.0-b47	"Thu Aug 11 03:18:56 EDT 2005"	15964	952387	0	0	1	0	3	4	3
    31	jdk1.6.0-b48	"Thu Aug 18 08:10:40 EDT 2005"	15970	953421	0	0	0	0	3	5	3
    32	jdk1.6.0-b49	"Thu Aug 25 03:24:38 EDT 2005"	16048	958940	0	0	0	0	3	5	3
    33	jdk1.6.0-b50	"Thu Sep 01 01:52:40 EDT 2005"	16287	974937	1	0	0	0	3	5	4
    34	jdk1.6.0-b51	"Thu Sep 08 01:55:36 EDT 2005"	16362	979377	0	0	0	0	4	5	4
    35	jdk1.6.0-b52	"Thu Sep 15 02:04:08 EDT 2005"	16477	979399	0	0	0	0	4	5	4
    36	jdk1.6.0-b53	"Thu Sep 22 02:00:28 EDT 2005"	16019	957900	0	0	1	0	3	5	3
    37	jdk1.6.0-b54	"Thu Sep 29 01:54:34 EDT 2005"	16019	957900	0	0	0	0	3	6	3
    38	jdk1.6.0-b55	"Thu Oct 06 01:54:14 EDT 2005"	16051	959014	0	0	0	0	3	6	3
    39	jdk1.6.0-b56	"Thu Oct 13 01:54:12 EDT 2005"	16211	970835	0	0	0	0	3	6	3
    40	jdk1.6.0-b57	"Thu Oct 20 01:55:26 EDT 2005"	16279	971627	0	0	0	0	3	6	3
    41	jdk1.6.0-b58	"Thu Oct 27 01:56:30 EDT 2005"	16283	971945	0	0	0	0	3	6	3
    42	jdk1.6.0-b59	"Thu Nov 03 01:56:58 EST 2005"	16232	972193	0	0	0	0	3	6	3
    43	jdk1.6.0-b60	"Thu Nov 10 01:54:18 EST 2005"	16235	972346	0	0	0	0	3	6	3

We could also generate that information directly, without creating an intermediate db.xml file, using the command

    computeBugHistory  jdk1.6.0-b*/jre/lib/rt.xml | filterBugs -bugPattern IL_ db.xml | mineBugHistory -formatDates

We can then use that information to display a graph showing the number of infinite recursive loops found by FindBugs in each build of Sun's JDK1.6.0. The blue area indicates the number of infinite recursive loops in that build, the red area above it indicates the number of infinite recursive loops that existed in some previous version but not in the current version (thus, the combined height of the red and blue areas is guaranteed to never decrease, and goes up whenever a new infinite recursive loop bug is introduced). The height of the red area is computed as the sum of the fixed, removed and dead values for each version. The reductions in builds 13 and 14 came after Sun was notified about the bugs found by FindBugs in the JDK.

Given the db.xml file that contains the results for all the jdk1.6.0 builds, the following command will show the history of high and medium priority correctness warnings:

    filterBugs -priority M -category C db.xml | mineBugHistory -formatDates

generating the table:

    seq	version	time	classes	NCSS	added	newCode	fixed	removed	retained	dead	active
    0	jdk1.6.0-b12	"Thu Nov 11 09:07:20 EST 2004"	13128	811569	0	1075	0	0	0	0	1075
    1	jdk1.6.0-b13	"Thu Nov 18 06:02:06 EST 2004"	13128	811570	0	0	0	0	1075	0	1075
    2	jdk1.6.0-b14	"Thu Dec 02 06:12:26 EST 2004"	13145	811786	3	0	6	0	1069	0	1072
    3	jdk1.6.0-b15	"Thu Dec 09 06:07:04 EST 2004"	13174	811693	2	1	3	0	1069	6	1072
    4	jdk1.6.0-b16	"Thu Dec 16 06:21:28 EST 2004"	13175	811715	0	0	1	0	1071	9	1071
    5	jdk1.6.0-b17	"Thu Dec 23 06:27:22 EST 2004"	13176	811974	0	0	1	0	1070	10	1070
    6	jdk1.6.0-b19	"Thu Jan 13 06:41:16 EST 2005"	13176	812011	0	0	0	0	1070	11	1070
    7	jdk1.6.0-b21	"Thu Jan 27 05:57:52 EST 2005"	13177	812173	0	0	1	0	1069	11	1069
    8	jdk1.6.0-b23	"Thu Feb 10 05:44:36 EST 2005"	13179	812188	0	0	0	0	1069	12	1069
    9	jdk1.6.0-b26	"Thu Mar 03 06:04:02 EST 2005"	13199	811770	0	0	2	1	1066	12	1066
    10	jdk1.6.0-b27	"Thu Mar 10 04:48:38 EST 2005"	13189	812440	1	0	1	1	1064	15	1065
    11	jdk1.6.0-b28	"Thu Mar 17 02:54:22 EST 2005"	13185	812056	0	0	0	0	1065	17	1065
    12	jdk1.6.0-b29	"Thu Mar 24 03:09:20 EST 2005"	13117	809468	3	0	8	26	1031	17	1034
    13	jdk1.6.0-b30	"Thu Mar 31 02:53:32 EST 2005"	13118	809501	0	0	0	0	1034	51	1034
    14	jdk1.6.0-b31	"Thu Apr 07 03:00:14 EDT 2005"	13117	809572	0	0	0	0	1034	51	1034
    15	jdk1.6.0-b32	"Thu Apr 14 02:56:56 EDT 2005"	13169	811096	1	1	0	1	1033	51	1035
    16	jdk1.6.0-b33	"Thu Apr 21 02:46:22 EDT 2005"	13187	811942	3	0	2	1	1032	52	1035
    17	jdk1.6.0-b34	"Thu Apr 28 02:49:00 EDT 2005"	13195	813488	0	1	0	0	1035	55	1036
    18	jdk1.6.0-b35	"Thu May 05 02:49:04 EDT 2005"	13457	829837	0	36	2	0	1034	55	1070
    19	jdk1.6.0-b36	"Thu May 12 02:59:46 EDT 2005"	13462	831278	0	0	0	0	1070	57	1070
    20	jdk1.6.0-b37	"Thu May 19 02:55:08 EDT 2005"	13464	831971	0	1	1	0	1069	57	1070
    21	jdk1.6.0-b38	"Thu May 26 03:08:16 EDT 2005"	13564	836565	1	7	2	6	1062	58	1070
    22	jdk1.6.0-b39	"Fri Jun 03 03:10:48 EDT 2005"	13856	849992	6	39	5	0	1065	66	1110
    23	jdk1.6.0-b40	"Thu Jun 09 03:30:28 EDT 2005"	15972	959619	7	147	11	0	1099	71	1253
    24	jdk1.6.0-b41	"Thu Jun 16 03:19:22 EDT 2005"	15972	959619	0	0	0	0	1253	82	1253
    25	jdk1.6.0-b42	"Fri Jun 24 03:38:54 EDT 2005"	15966	958581	3	0	1	2	1250	82	1253
    26	jdk1.6.0-b43	"Thu Jul 14 03:09:34 EDT 2005"	16041	960544	5	11	15	8	1230	85	1246
    27	jdk1.6.0-b44	"Thu Jul 21 03:05:54 EDT 2005"	16041	960547	0	0	0	0	1246	108	1246
    28	jdk1.6.0-b45	"Thu Jul 28 03:26:10 EDT 2005"	16037	960606	19	0	2	0	1244	108	1263
    29	jdk1.6.0-b46	"Thu Aug 04 03:02:48 EDT 2005"	15936	951355	13	1	1	32	1230	110	1244
    30	jdk1.6.0-b47	"Thu Aug 11 03:18:56 EDT 2005"	15964	952387	163	8	7	20	1217	143	1388
    31	jdk1.6.0-b48	"Thu Aug 18 08:10:40 EDT 2005"	15970	953421	0	0	0	0	1388	170	1388
    32	jdk1.6.0-b49	"Thu Aug 25 03:24:38 EDT 2005"	16048	958940	1	11	1	0	1387	170	1399
    33	jdk1.6.0-b50	"Thu Sep 01 01:52:40 EDT 2005"	16287	974937	19	27	16	7	1376	171	1422
    34	jdk1.6.0-b51	"Thu Sep 08 01:55:36 EDT 2005"	16362	979377	1	15	3	0	1419	194	1435
    35	jdk1.6.0-b52	"Thu Sep 15 02:04:08 EDT 2005"	16477	979399	0	0	1	1	1433	197	1433
    36	jdk1.6.0-b53	"Thu Sep 22 02:00:28 EDT 2005"	16019	957900	13	12	16	20	1397	199	1422
    37	jdk1.6.0-b54	"Thu Sep 29 01:54:34 EDT 2005"	16019	957900	0	0	0	0	1422	235	1422
    38	jdk1.6.0-b55	"Thu Oct 06 01:54:14 EDT 2005"	16051	959014	1	4	7	0	1415	235	1420
    39	jdk1.6.0-b56	"Thu Oct 13 01:54:12 EDT 2005"	16211	970835	6	8	37	0	1383	242	1397
    40	jdk1.6.0-b57	"Thu Oct 20 01:55:26 EDT 2005"	16279	971627	0	0	0	0	1397	279	1397
    41	jdk1.6.0-b58	"Thu Oct 27 01:56:30 EDT 2005"	16283	971945	0	1	1	0	1396	279	1397
    42	jdk1.6.0-b59	"Thu Nov 03 01:56:58 EST 2005"	16232	972193	6	0	5	0	1392	280	1398
    43	jdk1.6.0-b60	"Thu Nov 10 01:54:18 EST 2005"	16235	972346	0	0	0	0	1398	285	1398
    44	jdk1.6.0-b61	"Thu Nov 17 01:58:42 EST 2005"	16202	971134	2	0	4	0	1394	285	1396

#### Incremental history maintenance

If db.xml contains the results of running findbugs over builds b12 - b60, we can update db.xml to include the results of analyzing b61 with the commands:

    computeBugHistory -output db.xml db.xml jdk1.6.0-b61/jre/lib/rt.xml

### Ant example

Here is a complete ant script example for both running findbugs and running a chain of data-mining tools afterward:

    <project name="analyze_asm_util" default="findbugs">
       <!-- findbugs task definition -->
       <property name="findbugs.home" value="/Users/ben/Documents/workspace/findbugs/findbugs" />
       <property name="jvmargs" value="-server -Xss1m -Xmx800m -Duser.language=en -Duser.region=EN -Dfindbugs.home=${findbugs.home}" />

        <path id="findbugs.lib">
          <fileset dir="${findbugs.home}/lib">
             <include name="findbugs-ant.jar"/>
          </fileset>
       </path>

       <taskdef name="findbugs" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.FindBugsTask">
          <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
       </taskdef>

       <taskdef name="computeBugHistory" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.ComputeBugHistoryTask">
          <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
       </taskdef>

       <taskdef name="setBugDatabaseInfo" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.SetBugDatabaseInfoTask">
          <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
       </taskdef>

       <taskdef name="mineBugHistory" classname="edu.umd.cs.findbugs.anttask.MineBugHistoryTask">
          <classpath refid="findbugs.lib" />
       </taskdef>

       <!-- findbugs task definition -->
       <target name="findbugs">
          <antcall target="analyze" />
          <antcall target="mine" />
       </target>

       <!-- analyze task -->
       <target name="analyze">
          <!-- run findbugs against asm-util -->
          <findbugs home="${findbugs.home}"
                    output="xml:withMessages"
                    timeout="90000000"
                    reportLevel="experimental"
                    workHard="true"
                    effort="max"
                    adjustExperimental="true"
                    jvmargs="${jvmargs}"
                    failOnError="true"
                    outputFile="out.xml"
                    projectName="Findbugs"
                    debug="false">
             <class location="asm-util-3.0.jar" />
          </findbugs>
       </target>

       <target name="mine">

          <!-- Set info to the latest analysis -->
          <setBugDatabaseInfo home="${findbugs.home}"
                                withMessages="true"
                                name="asm-util-3.0.jar"
                                input="out.xml"
                                output="out-rel.xml"/>

          <!-- Checking if history file already exists (out-hist.xml) -->
          <condition property="mining.historyfile.available">
             <available file="out-hist.xml"/>
          </condition>
          <condition property="mining.historyfile.notavailable">
             <not>
                <available file="out-hist.xml"/>
             </not>
          </condition>

          <!-- this target is executed if the history file do not exist (first run) -->
          <antcall target="history-init">
            <param name="data.file" value="out-rel.xml" />
            <param name="hist.file" value="out-hist.xml" />
          </antcall>
          <!-- else this one is executed -->
          <antcall target="history">
            <param name="data.file"         value="out-rel.xml" />
            <param name="hist.file"         value="out-hist.xml" />
            <param name="hist.summary.file" value="out-hist.txt" />
          </antcall>
       </target>

       <!-- Initializing history file -->
       <target name="history-init" if="mining.historyfile.notavailable">
          <copy file="${data.file}" tofile="${hist.file}" />
       </target>

       <!-- Computing bug history -->
       <target name="history" if="mining.historyfile.available">
          <!-- Merging ${data.file} into ${hist.file} -->
          <computeBugHistory home="${findbugs.home}"
                               withMessages="true"
                               output="${hist.file}">
                <dataFile name="${hist.file}"/>
                <dataFile name="${data.file}"/>
          </computeBugHistory>

          <!-- Compute history into ${hist.summary.file} -->
          <mineBugHistory home="${findbugs.home}"
                            formatDates="true"
                          noTabs="true"
                            input="${hist.file}"
                            output="${hist.summary.file}"/>
       </target>

    </project>

## License

The name FindBugs and the FindBugs logo is trademarked by the University of Maryland. FindBugs is free software distributed under the terms of the Lesser GNU Public License. You should have received a copy of the license in the file `LICENSE.txt` in the &FindBugs; distribution.

You can find the latest version of FindBugs, along with its source code, from the FindBugs web page.

## Acknowledgments

### Contributors

&FindBugs; was originally written by Bill Pugh (pugh@cs.umd.edu). David Hovemeyer (daveho@cs.umd.edu) implemented some of the detectors, added the Swing GUI, and is a co-maintainer.

Mike Fagan (mfagan@tde.com) contributed the &Ant; build script, the &Ant; task, and several enhancements and bug fixes to the GUI.

Germano Leichsenring contributed Japanese translations of the bug summaries.

David Li contributed the Emacs bug report format.

Peter D. Stout contributed recursive detection of Class-Path attributes in analyzed Jar files, German translations of text used in the Swing GUI, and other fixes.

Peter Friese wrote the &FindBugs; Eclipse plugin.

Rohan Lloyd contributed several Mac OS X enhancements, bug detector improvements, and maintains the Fink package for &FindBugs;.

Hiroshi Okugawa translated the &FindBugs; manual and more of the bug summaries into Japanese.

Phil Crosby enhanced the Eclipse plugin to add a view to display the bug details.

Dave Brosius fixed a number of bugs, added user preferences to the Swing GUI, improved several bug detectors, and contributed the string concatenation detector.

Thomas Klaeger contributed a number of bug fixes and bug detector improvements.

Andrey Loskutov made a number of bug fixes and bug detector improvements. He is maintainer of the Eclipse plugin.

Brian Goetz contributed a major refactoring of the visitor classes to improve readability and understandability.

Pete Angstadt fixed several problems in the Swing GUI.

Francis Lalonde provided a task resource file for the FindBugs Ant task.

Garvin LeClaire contributed support for output in Xdocs format, for use by Maven.

Holger Stenzhorn contributed improved German translations of items in the Swing GUI.

Juha Knuutila contributed Finnish translations of items in the Swing GUI.

Tanel Lebedev contributed Estonian translations of items in the Swing GUI.

Hanai Shisei (ruimo) contributed full Japanese translations of bug messages, and text used in the Swing GUI.

David Cotton contributed Fresh translations for bug messages and for the Swing GUI.

Michael Tamm contributed support for the "errorProperty" attribute in the Ant task.

Thomas Kuehne improved the German translation of the Swing GUI.

Len Trigg improved source file support for the Emacs output mode.

Greg Bentz provided a fix for the hashcode/equals detector.

K. Hashimoto contributed internationalization fixes and several other bug fixes.

Glenn Boysko contributed support for ignoring specified local variables in the dead local store detector.

Jay Dunning contributed a detector to find equality comparisons of floating-point values, and overhauled the analysis summary report and its representation in the saved XML format.

Olivier Parent contributed updated French translations for bug descriptions and Swing GUI.

Chris Nappin contributed the `plain.xsl` stylesheet.

Etienne Giraudy contributed the `fancy.xsl` and `fancy-hist.xsl` stylesheets, and made improvements to the `-xml:withMessages` option.

Takashi Okamoto fixed bugs in the project preferences dialog in the Eclipse plugin, and contributed to its internationalization and localization.

Thomas Einwaller fixed bugs in the project preferences dialog in the Eclipse plugin.

Jeff Knox contributed support for the warningsProperty attribute in the Ant task.

Peter Hendriks extended the Eclipse plugin preferences, and fixed a bug related to renaming the Eclipse plugin ID.

Mark McKay contributed an Ant task to launch the findbugs frame.

Dieter von Holten (dvholten) contributed some German improvements to findbugs_de.properties.

Kevin Lubick contributed fixes and tests for multi-quick-fixes and customizable annotation colors for Eclipse plugin.

Tagir Valeev contributed several new bug detectors and improved existing ones.

If you have contributed to &FindBugs;, but aren't mentioned above, please send email to findbugs@cs.umd.edu (and also accept our humble apologies).

### Software Used

&FindBugs; uses several open-source software packages, without which its development would have been much more difficult.

#### BCEL

&FindBugs; includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/). Specifically, it uses the Byte Code Engineering Library.

#### ASM

&FindBugs; uses the ASM bytecode framework, which is distributed under the following license:

> Copyright (c) 2000-2005 INRIA, France Telecom All rights reserved.

> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

> 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

> 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

> 3. Neither the name of the copyright holders nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

#### DOM4J

&FindBugs; uses DOM4J, which is distributed under the following license:

> Copyright 2001 (C) MetaStuff, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

> Redistribution and use of this software and associated documentation ("Software"), with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

> 1. Redistributions of source code must retain copyright statements and notices. Redistributions must also contain a copy of this document.

> 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

> 3. The name "DOM4J" must not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Software without prior written permission of MetaStuff, Ltd. For written permission, please contact dom4j-info@metastuff.com.

> 4. Products derived from this Software may not be called "DOM4J" nor may "DOM4J" appear in their names without prior written permission of MetaStuff, Ltd. DOM4J is a registered trademark of MetaStuff, Ltd.

> 5. Due credit should be given to the DOM4J Project (http://dom4j.org/).

> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY METASTUFF, LTD. AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL METASTUFF, LTD. OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.