Inspect code with FindBugs

Today I'd like to introduce an Open Source software we use for three years at least to perform code review and identify potential bugs in our Java code. Its name is FindBugs. It works performing static analysis of the Java bytecode. It covers different categories of bugs, including those related to the web applications security (this was the main reason we started to use it, but later we begun to use it for different categories of bugs). The software is distributed as a standalone GUI application or as plug-in available for the most famous IDEs. In this post I will refer to the plugin for Eclipse Indigo.

You can download FindBugs from the the official website

http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/

If you plan to use FindBugs as Eclipse plug-in you don’t need to download and install the standalone application too.

The plug-in requires the Eclipse release 3.3 or later and the JDK release 1.5 or later. The installation of the plug-in is very simple:

• In Eclipse, click on Help -> Install New Software...
• Click on the Add button.
• Enter the following and after click OK:  Name: FindBugs update site , Location: one of the following (note: no final slash on the url) , http://findbugs.cs.umd.edu/eclipse for official releases , http://findbugs.cs.umd.edu/eclipse-candidate for candidate releases and official releases , http://findbugs.cs.umd.edu/eclipse-daily for all releases, including developmental ones
• Click on the Select All button and the on the Next button.
• In the Installation Details window click on the Next button.
• Accept the terms of the license agreement and then click on the Finish button.
• The plugin is not digitally signed. Go ahead and install it anyway.
• Click Restart Now to make Eclipse restart itself.

FindBugs plugin provides a FindBugs perspective (see Figure 1). To execute on a project double click on the project name and then click on Find Bugs

Figure 1 – The FindBugs perspective

At the end of the project code analysis the Bug Explorer will show a list of the found bugs grouped by category. Clicking on a bug you will see the fragment of code affected by the bug and a more detailed description of the bug with suggestions to eliminate it. You can refer to the official documentation on the website for a full detailed explanation of the error categories.

You can customize the plugin by the project properties menu (see Figure 2). It is possible to include/exclude bug categories, set the analysis effort, set the XML report parameters and add filters.

Figure 2 – FindBugs preference settings