FindBugs. This tutorial describes the usage of the FindBugs plug-in for Eclipse. It is based on Eclipse 4.6.

1. What is FindBugs

FindBugs is an open source project for a static analysis of the Java bytecode to identify potential software bugs. Findbugs provides early feedback about potential errors in the code. This helps the developer to access these problems early in the development phase.

The analysis of Findbugs can be integrated into existing IDEs like the Eclipse IDE of IntelliJ.

2. Installation of the FindBugs tooling for Eclipse

Use the Help  Install New Software…​ menu entry to install all the FindBugs components from the following URL. Restart your Eclipse IDE after the installation completes.

http://findbugs.cs.umd.edu/eclipse

3. Using FindBugs in Eclipse

3.1. Run FindBugs for a project

To run the error analysis of FindBugs on a project, right-click on it and select the Find Bugs…​  Find Bugs menu entry.

Run FindBugs on a project

3.2. View the errors reported by FindBugs

FindBugs provides specialized views to see the reported error messages. Select View  Zoom  Reset Window  Show View  Other…​ to access the views.

findbugs20
findbugs30

The FindBugs error messages are also displayed in the Problems view or as decorators in the Package Explorer view.

3.3. Configure automatic FindBugs run

You can configure that FindBugs should run automatically for a selected project. For this right-click on a project and select Properties from the popup menu. Select FindBugs  Run automatically.

findbugsprojectproperties

4.1. Code Analysis resources

FindBugs Homepage

If you need more assistance we offer Online Training and Onsite training as well as consulting

See License for license information.