PMD rule sets can no longer contain apex rules

[ChrisGottlieb]

Affected Version

2.1.0 on Intellij IDEA 2025.3.4

Description:

None of the apex related PMD rules work any longer. Referencing them in a rule set breaks the rule set.

Steps to replicate:

1. Create a rule set xml containing:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ruleset name="Custom Rules"
         xmlns="http://pmd.sourceforge.net/ruleset/2.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://pmd.sourceforge.net/ruleset/2.0.0 https://pmd.sourceforge.io/ruleset_2_0_0.xsd">
    <description>
        My custom rules
    </description>
    <rule ref="category/apex/bestpractices.xml/AvoidGlobalModifier" />
</ruleset>

2. Try to load it as a rule set under: Settings | Tools | PMD | RuleSets | +

Expected result:

The file should be accepted.

Actual result:

Error: "The selected file/URL is not valid for PMD 7. PMD: Cannot load ruleset category/apex/bestpractices.xml/AvoidGlobalModifier: Cannot resolve rule/ruleset reference 'category/apex/bestpractices.xml/AvoidGlobalModifier'. Make sure the resource is a valid file ..."

Further reference:

https://pmd.github.io/pmd/pmd_rules_apex_bestpractices.html#avoidglobalmodifier defines this rule and is currently supported.

Workaround:

Reverting the Plugin to Version 2.0.7. where the rules can still be referenced.

[adangel]

Out of interest: Which IDE is commonly used by Salesforce Apex developers? I wasn't aware till now that IntelliJ is used for that. I only knew about vscode -> https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=chuckjonas.apex-pmd

[adangel]

The removal of Apex was part of #266:

• Dropped support for "unsupported" languages
  • These languages have no runtime annotator support so let't remove them.
  • This shrinks the final ZIP from 43MB to 12MB. 72% smaller!

[ChrisGottlieb]

Thanks for the quick reply :-)

1. Is there a way we can add the language support through manual steps on our Clients?
2. The most popular IDE is VS Code, since it is free and has the support of Salesforce as a Vendor to use the inbuilt Copilot "Agentforce Vibe". But to my experience the professional community of larger enterprises usually prefers Intellij + Illuminated Cloud 2 Plugin, since it comes with a lot of convenient features. https://github.com/SCWells72 would probably know best how many customers that has, since he is the Lead Dev to my knowledge.