Error Prone Plugin Not Applied and Build Passes Despite Errors #18470

Summary

The Error Prone plugin is not being applied correctly, and even after promoting all disabled checks and warnings to errors, the build still passes. This issue surfaced after splitting tools in the CI configuration.

Details

After splitting the tools in our CI setup, we observed behavior that indicates Error Prone is either not executed or not enforced as expected. Specifically:

• The Error Prone plugin does not appear to be applied.
• When all disabled checks and warnings are promoted to errors, the build still succeeds.
• This raises concerns about whether static analysis tools are properly configured and enforced in CI.

Related Links

• Issue #18470: Align spotbugs and pmd config with rewrite #18454 #18479 #18440
  • https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/pull/18440/changes#r2655335514
• 
• 
• StaticImport is something thats not complain with checkstyle currently, therefore this seems to be kind of out of sync as well.
• 

Expected Behavior

1. The Error Prone plugin should be applied consistently in both local and CI builds.
2. When warnings and disabled checks are promoted to errors, the build should fail.
3. CI should reliably enforce Error Prone violations and fail the build when issues are present.

Current Behavior

1. Error Prone plugin is not applied.
2. Promoting all disabled checks and warnings to errors does not fail the build.
3. CI reports success even when Error Prone violations should cause a failure.

Impact

• Static analysis rules are not enforced as intended.
• Developers may get a false sense of build correctness.
• Code quality issues may be merged undetected.

Notes

This likely indicates a configuration issue introduced during the CI tool split. We need to verify:

• Whether the Error Prone plugin is correctly applied in all relevant modules.
• Whether CI is invoking the same build configuration as local runs.
• If Error Prone is being skipped, disabled, or downgraded in CI execution.

PS:

Happy New Year 🎉
Let’s start the new one as the previous ended — well — with great improvements driven by community effort and time.