Findbugs issue with ant

Question

findbugs:

[findbugs] Executing findbugs from ant task
[findbugs] Running FindBugs...
[findbugs] java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/bcel/classfile/ClassFormtException
[findbugs] Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.bcel.classfile.ClassFormatException
[findbugs]     at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
[findbugs]     at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
[findbugs]     at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
[findbugs]     at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
[findbugs]     at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
[findbugs]     at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
[findbugs] Could not find the main class: edu.umd.cs.findbugs.FindBugs2.  Program will exit.
[findbugs] Exception in thread "main"

I get this issue on executing findbugs with ant though I kept findbugs and essential jar files in the required folder.

I use findbugs 1.3.2 and bcel 5.2.

How to solve this issue ?

[findbugs] Output saved to bugs/reports/findbugs.xml

Answer 1

The findbugs documentation states the following:

Note

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.

You do not indicate which version of the ANT task you are using....

I would recommend using a dependency manager like ivy to take care of complex classpaths as follows:

<project name="demo" default="findbugs" xmlns:ivy="antlib:org.apache.ivy.ant">

    <target name="init" description="Use ivy to manage ANT tasks">
        <ivy:cachepath pathid="findbugs.path">
            <dependency org="com.google.code.findbugs" name="findbugs-ant" rev="2.0.1" conf="default"/>
        </ivy:cachepath>

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

    <target name="findbugs" depends="init">
        ..
        <findbugs ..
        ..
    </target>

</project>

Finally, it is also worth considering the use of Sonar. The Sonar ANT task manages all the findbugs dependencies for you and also runs other tools like checkstyle and PMD.