Checkstyle Maven plugin execution doesn't fail on error when using google_checks

Question

I'm using the Maven Checkstyle plugin in version 3.0.0 and Checkstyle 6.18.

This is my initial configuration:

<properties>
    <maven.checkstyle.plugin.version>3.0.0</maven.checkstyle.plugin.version>
</properties>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>${maven.checkstyle.plugin.version}</version>
            <configuration>
                <failsOnError>true</failsOnError>
                <failOnViolation>true</failOnViolation>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Running mvn checkstyle:checkstyle will fail the build since there are checkstyle errors. This is expected.

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-checkstyle-plugin:3.0.0:check (default-cli) on project demo: Failed during checkstyle execution: There are 311 errors reported by Checkstyle 6.18 with sun_checks.xml ruleset. -> [Help 1]

However, when I use google_checks.xml which comes bundled with the Maven plugin the build succeeds without any error (target/checkstyle-report.xml still shows the issues though).

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${maven.checkstyle.plugin.version}</version>
    <configuration>
        <configLocation>google_checks.xml</configLocation>
        <failsOnError>true</failsOnError>
        <failOnViolation>true</failOnViolation>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

My expectation would be that the build fails when I use the google_checks.xml configuration. What am I doing wrong?

UPDATE (04.05.2018): I've raised a bug for this.

Answer 1

In google_checks.xml, the severity is marked as failure. Changing that to error causes the check to fail.

Original:

<property name="severity" value="warning"/>

Updated:

<property name="severity" value="error"/>

In your Maven configuration, you can also tweak on which severity to fail:

<configuration>
    <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
    <consoleOutput>true</consoleOutput>
    <failsOnError>true</failsOnError>
    <failOnViolation>true</failOnViolation>
    <violationSeverity>warning</violationSeverity>
    <linkXRef>false</linkXRef>
</configuration>