How to exclude a file for checking in PMD maven pom.xml file?

Question

As per what I saw in the documentation it tells to use <exclude-pattern></exclude-pattern> tag for excluding some files (or packages) in the project for checking. But it does not seems to work me. I even tried the maven <excludes></excludes> but it seems to create problem for other part of the project. So what is the ideal way to exclude a file for PMD maven check?

One of the configuration which I used in pom.xml to exclude example is as follows but it does not seems to work :-

<configuration>
    <rulesets>
        <exclude-pattern>.*/example/*.*</exclude-pattern>
        <ruleset>${project.basedir}\ruleset\basic.xml</ruleset>
        <!-- ruleset>${project.basedir}\ruleset\braces.xml</ruleset>
        <ruleset>${project.basedir}\ruleset\design.xml</ruleset>
        <ruleset>${project.basedir}\ruleset\controversial.xml</ruleset>
        <ruleset>${project.basedir}\ruleset\coupling.xml</ruleset>
        <ruleset>${project.basedir}\ruleset\clone.xml</ruleset>
        <ruleset>${project.basedir}\ruleset\comments.xml</ruleset-->
    </rulesets>
</configuration>

You might be seeing that only first rule is being used for checking and other are commented. That is because I am seeing a weird issue in which the build failure happens when only first rule is included but the build passes if all other rules are included along the first one.

Answer 1

If you want to exclude files from pmd checks your configuration should look something like this. The exclusions should be under the root of configuration not inside the rulesets tag.

<configuration>
    <excludes>
        <exclude>.*/example/*.*</exclude>
    </excludes>
</configuration>