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Code Quality & Hygiene

To maintain a healthy and maintainable codebase, TAFLEX incorporates automated static analysis tools that enforce coding standards and detect potential bugs.

🛠 Quality Tools​

We use two primary tools in our ecosystem:

ToolPurposeEquivalent in JS
CheckstyleEnforces coding standards (naming, indentation, whitespace).ESLint
PMDDetects code smells and programming errors (unused variables, empty catch blocks).SonarQube / ESLint

🚀 Running Checks Locally​

Before submitting a Pull Request, you should run the full verification suite:

# Run all static analysis and unit tests
./gradlew verifyBuild test

Specific tasks:

  • checkstyleMain / checkstyleTest: Run style checks.
  • pmdMain / pmdTest: Run bug detection.

Reports are generated at:

  • build/reports/checkstyle/
  • build/reports/pmd/

🔍 Issues Detected​

1. Standard Violations (Checkstyle)​

  • Unused Imports: Keeps the code clean and compilation fast.
  • Star Imports: Avoids import java.util.* to prevent naming collisions.
  • Naming Conventions: Ensures classes use PascalCase and methods use camelCase.
  • Line Length: Enforces a maximum of 140 characters per line for readability.

2. Code Smells (PMD)​

  • Duplicate Literals: Detects strings used multiple times that should be constants.
  • Unused Private Fields: Identifies dead code that can be removed.
  • Missing SerialVersionUID: Ensures exceptions and serializable classes are robust.
  • Empty Control Statements: Catches empty if or while blocks that might be logical errors.

🤖 CI/CD Integration​

Every Push and Pull Request is automatically analyzed by our CI pipelines.

  • GitHub Actions: The lint job in ci.yml and pr-validation.yml ensures all contributions meet standards.
  • GitLab CI: The code_hygiene stage in .gitlab-ci.yml provides the same level of verification for GitLab users.
  • PR Validation: Blocks merging if new code quality issues are introduced.
  • Upload Reports: If a check fails in CI, the full HTML reports are uploaded as build artifacts for easy debugging.

🔧 Customizing Rules​

Rules are defined in the config/ directory:

  • config/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml
  • config/pmd/pmd-ruleset.xml

While we aim for high standards, these rules can be adjusted as the team's needs evolve.