IntelliJ IDEA Finds Bugs with FindBugs

What? Checking bugs in IntelliJ IDEA with FindBugs? Really? Did JetBrains remove its built-in Static Code Analysis engine, which could search for about 700 different bugs patterns, ranging from Ignored return value, Potential NullPointerException or Assignment to parameter to various sorts of multithreading problems, code smells, dataflow or control flow issues, XML, JavaScript, HTML bugs and such?

Obviously, this is not the case. The contrary is true. With the FindBugs plugin you get extra variety in the available tool-set for Static Code Analysis available in IntelliJ IDEA already:

• Built-in static code analysis engine
• Data flow analysis
• Dependency Structure Matrix Analysis
• Code Duplicate Detection
• PMD plugin
• CheckStyle plugin
• FindBugs plugin

The FindBugs plugin for IntelliJ IDEA, which you can grab from the default plugin repository, offers smooth FindBugs integration to the developers, who've got used to this powerful analysis tool and need to use it on their projects.

In the article I'd like to show you FindBugs working as a good citizen of the IntelliJ IDEA ecosystem.

Look and feel

Once you install the FindBugs plugin, you'll get a new dedicated tool window in the bottom left corner of your screen.

Using the appropriate buttons you can start code analysis for different scopes of your project. As a result a report is generated into the tool window.

The other buttons will let you change the criteria used to sort the found issues.

Selecting an entry in the report will bring up detailed description of the particular bug together with information about its location in your code. A single click and you grab the bug in your hands.

Enjoy finding bugs and getting them out of your code!