This repository has some simple Java code to help practice in running the Resource Leak Checker. Follow the steps below to get started.

Background

The Resource Leak Checker is a static analysis tool that checks for resource leaks in Java programs. A resource leak occurs when a program fails to close a resource, such as a file or a socket. Resource leaks can lead to bugs, security vulnerabilities, and performance problems. You can see a couple of small examples of resource leaks in this blog post but you should also search for other relevant documents if you are unfamiliar with resource leaks.

The Resource Leak Checker is part of the Checker Framework, which is a collection of pluggable type checkers. To learn more about pluggable type checking in general, read Chapters 1 and 2 in the Checker Framework manual. Then, read Chapter 8 to learn specifically about the Resource Leak Checker and its features. You can also read the FSE 2021 paper on the Resource Leak Checker for more details, background, and evaluation.

Running the Resource Leak Checker on this repository

To run the Resource Leak Checker on the code in this repository, follow these steps:

1. Create a fork of this repository, and clone your fork to your local machine. (Creating a fork is helpful so you can back up your changes on a branch.)
2. Create a new branch for your changes. For example, you could name the branch add-resource-leak-checker.
3. Add the Checker Framework Gradle Plugin to the build.gradle file in this repository, and enable the Resource Leak Checker as described in the plugin documentation (the fully-qualified name of the checker is org.checkerframework.checker.resourceleak.ResourceLeakChecker).
4. Run the Resource Leak Checker on the code in this repository by running the following command:

   ./gradlew compileJava
   

   If everything is configured correctly, you should see 2 reported errors.

Once you have successfully run the Resource Leak Checker on this repository, you can try fixing the reported errors.