Choose the rules that are right for you
Running every existing rule will result in a huge number of rule violations, most of which will be unimportant. Having to sort through a thousand line report to find the few you’re really interested in takes all the fun out of things.
Instead, start with some selected specific rules, e.g. the rules that detect unused code from the category Best Practices and fix any unused locals and fields.
Then, run rules, that detect empty if statements and such-like. You can find these rules in the category
Error Prone.
After that, look at all the categories and select the rules, that are useful for your project. You can find an overview of the rules on the Rule Index.
Use the rules you like via a custom ruleset.
PMD rules are not set in stone
Generally, pick the ones you like, and ignore or suppress the warnings you don’t like. It’s just a tool.
PMD IDE plugins are nice
Using PMD within your IDE is much more enjoyable than flipping back and forth between an HTML report and your IDE. Most IDE plugins have the “click on the rule violation and jump to that line of code” feature. Find the PMD plugin for your IDE, install it, and soon you’ll be fixing problems much faster.
Suggestions? Comments? Post them here. Thanks!