25-July-2025 - 7.16.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 7.16.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

• 🚀 New and noteworthy
  • 🚀 New: Java 25 Support
  • New: CPD support for CSS
  • ✨ New Rules
• 🐛 Fixed Issues
• 🚨 API Changes
  • Experimental APIs that are now considered stable
• ✨ Merged pull requests
• 📦 Dependency updates
• 📈 Stats

🚀 New and noteworthy

🚀 New: Java 25 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 25.

There are the following new standard language features:

• JEP 511: Module Import Declarations
• JEP 512: Compact Source Files and Instance Main Methods
• JEP 513: Flexible Constructor Bodies

And one preview language feature:

• JEP 507: Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch (Third Preview)

In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these preview language features,
you'll need to enable it via the environment variable PMD_JAVA_OPTS and select the new language
version 25-preview:

export PMD_JAVA_OPTS=--enable-preview
pmd check --use-version java-25-preview ...

Note: Support for Java 23 preview language features have been removed. The version "23-preview"
is no longer available.

New: CPD support for CSS

CPD now supports CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), a language for describing the rendering of structured
documents (such as HTML) on screen, on paper etc.
It is shipped with the new module pmd-css.

✨ New Rules

• Two new rules have been added to Java's Error Prone category: ReplaceJavaUtilCalendar
  and ReplaceJavaUtilDate. These rules help to migrate away from old Java APIs around
  java.util.Calendar and java.util.Date. It is recommended to use the modern java.time API instead, which
  is available since Java 8.

🐛 Fixed Issues

• core
  • #4328: [ci] Improve Github Actions Workflows
  • #5597: [core] POM Incompatibility with Maven 4
• java
  • #5344: [java] IllegalArgumentException: Invalid type reference for method or ctor type annotation: 16
  • #5478: [java] Support Java 25
• java-codestyle
  • #5892: [java] ShortVariable false positive for java 22 unnamed variable _
• java-design
  • #5858: [java] FinalFieldCouldBeStatic false positive for array initializers
• java-errorprone
  • #2862: [java] New Rules: Avoid java.util.Date and Calendar classes

🚨 API Changes

Experimental APIs that are now considered stable

• pmd-java
  • ASTImportDeclaration#isModuleImport is now stable API.
  • ASTCompilationUnit#isCompact is now stable API. Note, it was previously
    called isSimpleCompilationUnit.
  • ASTImplicitClassDeclaration is now stable API.
  • JavaVisitorBase#visit(ASTImplicitClassDeclaration, P) is now
    stable API.

✨ Merged pull requests

• #5733: [css] Add new CPD language - Thomas Prouvot (@tprouvot)
• #5859: Fix #5858: [java] Fix false positive in FinalFieldCouldBeStatic for array initializers - Zbynek Konecny (@zbynek)
• #5872: [java] Add Support for Java 25 - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5876: chore: license header cleanup - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5883: Fix #2862: [java] Add rules discouraging the use of java.util.Calendar and java.util.Date - UncleOwen (@UncleOwen)
• #5893: chore: Fix Mockito javaagent warning for Java 21+ - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5894: chore: Fix JUnit warning about invalid test factory - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5895: Fix #5597: Move dogfood profile to separate settings.xml - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5899: Fix #5344: [java] Just log invalid annotation target type - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5909: [ci] Create a pre-release for snapshot builds - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5911: [doc] Reference CPD Capable Languages in CPD CLI docu - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5914: Fix #5892: [java] ShortVariable FP for java 22 Unnamed Variable - Lukas Gräf (@lukasgraef)
• #5918: chore: [cli] Improve symbolic link tests for Windows - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)
• #5920: chore: [scala] Fix javadoc config - Andreas Dangel (@adangel)

📦 Dependency updates

• #5857: Bump PMD from 7.14.0 to 7.15.0
• #5861: Bump scalameta.version from 4.13.7 to 4.13.8
• #5862: Bump com.puppycrawl.tools:checkstyle from 10.25.1 to 10.26.1
• #5863: Bump org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-pmd-plugin from 3.26.0 to 3.27.0
• #5864: Bump kotlin.version from 1.9.24 to 2.2.0
• #5865: Bump org.junit:junit-bom from 5.13.1 to 5.13.2
• #5866: Bump org.jsoup:jsoup from 1.20.1 to 1.21.1
• #5884: Bump org.junit:junit-bom from 5.13.2 to 5.13.3
• #5885: Bump org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-gpg-plugin from 3.2.7 to 3.2.8
• #5886: Bump org.checkerframework:checker-qual from 3.49.4 to 3.49.5
• #5889: Bump org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-enforcer-plugin from 3.5.0 to 3.6.0
• #5900: Bump org.apache.commons:commons-lang3 from 3.17.0 to 3.18.0
• #5901: Bump io.github.apex-dev-tools:apex-parser from 4.4.0 to 4.4.1
• #5902: Bump log4j.version from 2.25.0 to 2.25.1
• #5910: Bump maven from 3.9.10 to 3.9.11
• #5921: Bump build-tools from 32 to 33
• #5926: chore(deps): bump org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-enforcer-plugin from 3.6.0 to 3.6.1
• #5927: chore(deps): bump ostruct from 0.6.2 to 0.6.3 in /.ci/files in the all-gems group across 1 directory
• #5928: chore(deps): bump marocchino/sticky-pull-request-comment from 2.9.3 to 2.9.4 in the all-actions group
• #5929: chore(deps): Update gems

📈 Stats

• 100 commits
• 21 closed tickets & PRs
• Days since last release: 27