How to disable HTML report generation in spotbugs-maven-plugin configuration?

[davewichers]

I'm using the spotbugs-maven-plugin, and only want it to generate the spotbugsXml.xml native results file, but don't want it to generate the human readable HTML report at: target/site/spotbugs.html. After it completes:

[INFO] Done SpotBugs Analysis....

I don't want it to do this:

[INFO] Rendering content with org.apache.maven.skins:maven-fluido-skin:jar:2.1.0 skin

Is there a way to add the spotbugs-maven-plugin to the section of the POM and disable the generation of all the human readable reports? Or is there some other easy way to tell it not to generate the human readable HTML reports? The app I'm running this on is huge and it's taking forever to generate this report, which I don't even use.

[davewichers]

@hazendaz - I saw your direct email to me. Just to be clear, I'm invoking the spotbugs plugin via a profile configured in my pom. It's not part of the standard reports configured/generated in the reporting section. I looked at PMDs docs: https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-pmd-plugin/index.html, and they offer the following option: "pmd:pmd creates a PMD site report based on the rulesets and configuration set in the plugin". It can also generate a pmd output file aside from the site report in any of the following formats: xml, csv or txt." However, in my case I want to generate the PMD output file, and the SpotBugs output file, but NOT the site report for either tool. When I try to configure the <reportSets> in the PMD plugin declaration, it throws an error. It will only allow me to set those options in the <reporting> declaration of the PMD plugin, but that configuration doesn't seem to affect invoking of PMD via pmd:pmd at the command line, so it doesn't do what I want.

For SpotBugs, I'd love to see the ability to suppress the site (HTML) report in both ways of invoking spotbugs. 1) via: spotbugs:spotbugs invocation at the command line, which should honor the configuration of the plugin where the plugin is declare in the <plugins> section, and 2) by configuring the <reportSets> under the <reporting> declaration of the spotbugs plugin to produce no HTML reports. Ideally, if you configured spotbugs to have no HTML reports when you declare the plugin, it would affect both direct invocation via: spotbugs:spotbugs, and also if the plugin was included in the reporting section, so you'd only have to disable it for both scenarios in the original plugin declaration. Thanks for looking into this.

FYI: This same issue was reported for the PMD maven plugin a month ago: apache/maven-pmd-plugin#189

[hazendaz]

@davewichers There was a bug when doxia 2 migration occurred here that was causing generation of the site pages even when 'site' not called. That was a result of execute() being made final by maven that was overridden in this plugin to skip the site pages and just generate the xdoc. So all runs were suddenly getting the site pages. I didn't notice that until the last few days. I've now submitted a fix to master that corrects that by querying maven session to figure out if its running site or spotbugs direct call or default allowed phase. So now those will not show up. Can you confirm if you were running everything but 'site'? If so, this will be fixed in the next release in a few days.

[davewichers]

I can see cases where if you want the spotbugs site report suppressed, you want it suppressed no matter how it is called. Will this change make it that way? I.e., both when spotbugs invoked directly and also when it is included in a site report? Per my comment above: "Ideally, if you configured spotbugs to have no HTML reports when you declare the plugin, it would affect both direct invocation via: spotbugs:spotbugs, and also if the plugin was included in the reporting section, so you'd only have to disable it for both scenarios in the original plugin declaration"

[hazendaz]

Currently there is 'htmlOutput' which defaults false. That flag is for internal spotbugs report option one can send. So that would be out of question to use to disable all html output because its already false on all runs unless asked for. So I think a new flag would need added that would skip html reports. So maybe 'skipHtmlReport' or something similar? I'm going to punt that for next release cycle though as I'm finalizing the current and think that aspect needs more thought. Most of problems you were otherwise probably experiencing is that since 4.9.2, its been always creating maven report pages when it should not have and that part is fixed.

[davewichers]

@hazendaz - I'm now seeing this when I run Spotbugs via the command line using: mvn compile spotbugs:spotbugs

Done SpotBugs Analysis....
Skipping com.github.spotbugs:spotbugs-maven-plugin:4.9.8.2:spotbugs report goal

So, it appears that this has been fixed so it does not generate the HTML reports by default. However, is a flag still needed so you can specify that you don't want HTML in your pom? Or is that not necessary anymore?

[hazendaz]

no flag was needed. It was a bug in doxia 2 migration that I did, ie the maven site itself. I had to rework that code to resolve. html was not meant to be written on every run, only when the site is ran.

[davewichers]

OK. Good. Thanks for the clarification. I think we're good now.