checkstyle module name ConstantName vs ConstantNameCheck

[Eugene Peh]

Hello all,

I have a question to ask regarding checkstyle. It seems that the checkstyle api accepts both module name, ConstantName and ConstantNameCheck for the configuration file, checkstyle.xml.

I would like to ask why is there a double standard here even though documentations on http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/ only promotes ConstantName module and what is the difference between using either of them? Will either one of them gets deprecated in future?

Thanks!

[Roman Ivanov]

Hi Eugene,

Both name are allowed for now, because checkstyle use brute force approach to load module in all known packages .... that is old design ... and we stuck with support of it for now.

Checkstyle try to fin module lcas in classpath in order: 

1) ConstantName 

2) ConstantNameCheck

It was done only for simplification of user configuration, to let user skip "Check" prefix everywhere. 

> Will either one of them gets deprecated in future?

No decision are made yet. 

In far future most likely we become more strict with names so user should provide full name. Right now whole world use short names so ... most likely we will continue to support that

Here is javadoc with our terminology - https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/blob/master/src/main/java/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/PackageObjectFactory.java#L34

FYI:

https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/issues/3184

​thanks,

Roman Ivanov

[Eugene Peh]

Hi Roman,

Thanks for the reply,
May I also ask why does the Eclipse's Checkstyle plugin -> Checkstyle Configuration only detects 
Module with short names? (It does not show up in the configuration above if its using full name)
Will it be fixed anytime soon? Thanks!

[Roman Ivanov]

it is better to ask at https://sourceforge.net/p/eclipse-cs/discussion/

here we do only checkstyle library, all IDE plugins are separate projects, that is good question to their  maintainers ....

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