Error using checkstyle/google_checks.xml with maven-checkstyle-plugin

Question

I am trying to use checkstyles google_checks.xml with maven-checkstyle-plugin. If I use the google_checks.xml with the latest checkstyle intelliJ plugin everything is correct but when I try configurating it via maven-checkstyle plugin I get this error:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-checkstyle-plugin:2.13:check (default-cli) on project XX_XX_XX: Failed during checkstyle configuration: cannot initialize module TreeWalker - Unable to instantiate AvoidEscapedUnicodeCharacters:
Unable to instantiate AvoidEscapedUnicodeCharactersCheck 

My pom.xml looks like this:

   <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
            xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
            xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<properties>
    [...]
    <checkstyle.file.path>develop/checkstyle/google_checks.xml</checkstyle.file.path>
</properties>
[...]
<build>
    <plugins>
        [...]
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.13</version>
            <configuration>
                <configLocation>${checkstyle.file.path}</configLocation>
                <failOnViolation>false</failOnViolation>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>
<reporting>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.9.1</version>
            <configuration>
                <configLocation>${checkstyle.file.path}</configLocation>
                <failOnViolation>false</failOnViolation>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</reporting>

Do you guys have some suggestions about what could be wrong?

Answer 1

fixed this by updating the checkstyle-dependency manually to the latest stable version:

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.13</version>
            <dependencies>
                <dependency>
                    <groupId>com.puppycrawl.tools</groupId>
                    <artifactId>checkstyle</artifactId>
                    <version>${checkstyle.latest.version}</version>
                </dependency>
            </dependencies>
            <configuration>
                <configLocation>${checkstyle.file.path}</configLocation>
                <failOnViolation>false</failOnViolation>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>

Answer 2

Maven checkstyle plugin uses checkstyle 5.7 (the first line of plugin description).

Checkstyle 5.7 does not have this check (see checks package on grepcode).

You need either to disable this check or to wait for official fix of MCHECKSTYLE-261.

Answer 3

I give a demo at

https://github.com/favoorr/Maven-Checkstyle-Multimodule-Use

Multi modules and use Google Chechstyle