Checkstyle 10.3.1 won't run on Gradle 7.5

Question

plugins {
   id("checkstyle")
}

implementation("com.puppycrawl.tools:checkstyle:10.3.1")

checkstyleMain {
    source = ["src/main/java"]
}

// Upgraded
checkstyle {
    toolVersion "10.3.1"
    configFile = file("config/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml")
}

Task :checkstyleMain FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':checkstyleMain'.
> A failure occurred while executing org.gradle.api.plugins.quality.internal.CheckstyleAction
   > Unable to create Root Module: config {/Users/NOTiFY/IdeaProjects/GoStopHandle/config/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml}, classpath {null}.

* Try:
> Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace.
> Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.
> Run with --scan to get full insights.

* Get more help at https://help.gradle.org

Deprecated Gradle features were used in this build, making it incompatible with Gradle 8.0.

You can use '--warning-mode all' to show the individual deprecation warnings and determine if they come from your own scripts or plugins.

See https://docs.gradle.org/7.5/userguide/command_line_interface.html#sec:command_line_warnings

BUILD FAILED in 3s

openjdk version "18.0.1" 2022-04-19

/usr/local/Cellar/gradle/7.5/bin/gradle /usr/local/Cellar/gradle/7.5/libexec/bin/gradle /usr/local/Cellar/gradle/7.5/libexec/docs/ (2521 files) /usr/local/Cellar/gradle/7.5/libexec/lib/ (233 files) /usr/local/Cellar/gradle/7.5/libexec/src/ (8579 files)

/usr/local/Cellar/checkstyle/10.3.1/bin/checkstyle /usr/local/Cellar/checkstyle/10.3.1/libexec/checkstyle-10.3.1-all.jar

Have added:

gradle build clean --stacktrace 

Errors:

Caused by: com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.CheckstyleException: cannot initialize module TreeWalker - cannot initialize module JavadocMethod - Property 'scope' does not exist, please check the documentation
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.Checker.setupChild(Checker.java:478)
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.AutomaticBean.configure(AutomaticBean.java:201)
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.ant.CheckstyleAntTask.createRootModule(CheckstyleAntTask.java:424)
        ... 34 more
Caused by: com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.CheckstyleException: cannot initialize module JavadocMethod - Property 'scope' does not exist, please check the documentation
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.TreeWalker.setupChild(TreeWalker.java:128)
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.AutomaticBean.configure(AutomaticBean.java:201)
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.Checker.setupChild(Checker.java:473)
        ... 36 more
Caused by: com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.CheckstyleException: Property 'scope' does not exist, please check the documentation
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.AutomaticBean.tryCopyProperty(AutomaticBean.java:227)
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.api.AutomaticBean.configure(AutomaticBean.java:194)
        at com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.TreeWalker.setupChild(TreeWalker.java:123)
        ... 38 more

Answer 1

This is Checkstyle's rather poor way of telling you there is something wrong with your configuration file (checkstyle.xml). Do as is suggested by the output and run with --stacktrace (or -S for short) to see what the actual problem with the configuration is.

Also, the way to specify the Checkstyle version to use is like this:

checkstyle {
    toolVersion('10.3.1')
}

What you did instead was to accidentally include the Checkstyle library on your own project classpath. So you are likely using the default version 8.x in Gradle right now.