Unable to locate Source XRef to link to

Question

I have a big maven project that uses the pmd plugin for code quality checks.

since I started using the pmd plugin i get the following warning message:

[WARNING] Unable to locate Source XRef to link to - DISABLED

I googled and found that i need to implement the jxr plugin.

so I add the following to the build property in the main pom.xml file.

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-jxr-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.3</version>
  </plugin>

welp it doesn't really change anything.

any ideas what I need to implement in order to resolve this warning message?

output of mvn -version

Apache Maven 3.0.4 (r1232337; 2012-01-17 10:44:56+0200)
Maven home: /usr/share/maven-bin-3.0
Java version: 1.7.0_05, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: /usr/lib64/icedtea7/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: ANSI_X3.4-1968
OS name: "linux", version: "3.5.2-gentoo", arch: "amd64", family: "unix"

thanks!

Answer 1

You should add the maven-jxr-plugin to the reportingPlugin section.

<reporting>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-jxr-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.3</version>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</reporting>

Re run it and enjoy.

BTW, maybe you'll need to run once the jxr:jxr goal to first generate some file that will be used by pmd.

Answer 2

Mind there is also the ability to disable the xref feature by adding

<configuration>
  <linkXRef>false</linkXRef>
</configuration>

to the maven-pmd-plugin plugin. This resolves the warning without making the build even longer due to running an additional reporting plugin. E.g. if you run your builds in Jenkins, the Jenkins PMD plugin can take care of relating PMD warnings to source code, there is no need to run another Maven plugin for this.

Answer 3

You should add the maven-jxr-plugin and run the jxr:jxr goal before the site lifecycle if the maven-jxr-plugin is added as a plugin like in your case:
clean jxr:jxr site

Otherwise you should add it as a report if you want it to work with mvn site. Take a look at the JXR Usage Documentation : JXR Usage