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#25122 resolves the dependency issue noted in the original post.

In order to resolve this issue fully and for Gradle to officially support PMD 7.0, org.gradle.quality.integtest.fixtures.PmdCoverage would need to be updated to add an entry for 7.0.0-rc2 (or the most recent version) and verify all tests succeed.

Is this issue resolved, with gradle 8.5 and toolVersion 7.0.0-rc4 and I am still getting ClassNotFoundException: net.sourceforge.pmd.ant.PMDTask

Is this issue resolved, with gradle 8.5 and toolVersion 7.0.0-rc4 and I am still getting ClassNotFoundException: net.sourceforge.pmd.ant.PMDTask

You may identify the currently used PMD version here:

https://github.com/gradle/gradle/blob/master/platforms/jvm/code-quality/src/main/groovy/org/gradle/api/plugins/quality/PmdPlugin.java

It's defined in a constant DEFAULT_PMD_VERSION

Actually the code treats 7.0.0-rc4 as lower than 7.0.0 and is not loading pmd-ant dependency.

I've created PR to fix it: #27247.

Still an issue ...

pmd {
  toolVersion = "7.0.0"
}

./gradlew pmdMain
> Task :pmdMain FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':pmdMain'.
> A failure occurred while executing org.gradle.api.plugins.quality.internal.PmdAction
   > java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: net.sourceforge.pmd.ant.PMDTask
$ ./gradlew --version

------------------------------------------------------------
Gradle 8.7
------------------------------------------------------------

Build time:   2024-03-22 15:52:46 UTC
Revision:     650af14d7653aa949fce5e886e685efc9cf97c10

Kotlin:       1.9.22
Groovy:       3.0.17
Ant:          Apache Ant(TM) version 1.10.13 compiled on January 4 2023
JVM:          17.0.10 (Eclipse Adoptium 17.0.10+7)
OS:           Mac OS X 12.7.4 x86_64

The workaround mentioned in #24502 (comment) still works:

dependencies {
  pmd("net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-ant:7.0.0")
  pmd("net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-java:7.0.0")
}

With the simple test project at https://github.com/pmd/pmd-examples/tree/main/gradle/simple-project I cannot reproduce the problem.

For me, it generally works since gradle 8.6. I also confirmed, that it is still working with gradle 8.7. Of course, only for my little example project.

I played around a bit with --configuration-cache and --build-cache, but I still couldn't reproduce the problem: changing "toolVersion" in build.gradle, changes the file "build.gradle" which invalidates the configuration cache. This causes that the correct classpath to run PMD is used.

The relevant lines are here:

I tried reproducing it with your project and:

$ mkdir /tmp/gradle-pmd-toolversion-7 && cd "$_"
$ mkdir -p src/main/java
$ printf 'rootProject.name = "gradle-pmd-toolversion-7"' > settings.gradle.kts
$ printf 'plugins {
  `java-library`
  pmd
}

repositories {
  mavenCentral()
}

pmd {
  toolVersion = "7.0.0"
}' > build.gradle.kts
$ printf 'class Example {}' > src/main/java/Example.java
$ gradle wrapper --gradle-version=8.7
$ ./gradlew pmdMain
$ ./gradlew --no-daemon --no-build-cache --no-configuration-cache --no-configure-on-demand --rerun-tasks clean pmdMain

In both cases I could not reproduce it anymore—in other words: the combination of PMD 7 and Gradle 8.7 works.

Guess it was a file lock or cache problem yesterday 🤷

This works for me as well when removing my workaround. I'd recommend stopping the daemon and retrying @sdavids. I've had a few cases where leaks across builds cause confusion due to the persistent java compiler, which is a relatively recent improvement to reduce build times. However, sometimes there are class leaks from canceled builds, so maybe in the classpath too. Use ./gradlew --stop and retry.

oops, missed the race. looks like I can close. Thanks for supporting v7!