Coding Standard

When an project is an development cycle, Emphasizing each developer to follow coding standard is cumbersome that too just by reading few pages of guidelines. That's where some of the open source tools helps the programmers life easier and better.
There are many tools available to address this.As most of the java developer uses Eclipse as an preferred IDE, This article discuss about some of the eclipse plug-ins for evaluation purpose. Even though each of the tools are not equally comparable and address the its own problems, Its required to pursue each tool pro's and con's.

> CheckStyle

(*) Checks everyone follows the same coding format.
(*) Checks like content length(method, file, etc), imports, coding problems.
(*) Its not more active, last release was 2009. Every year one release max, so the latest JDK changes might not be available immediate


For more info : http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/index.html

> PMD

(*) Can be integrated into build tools like Ant,Maven
(*) Unlike CheckStype, It detects some advanced bugs like Dead, duplicate code etc.
(*) It also detects NPath Complexity,Excessive Class Length,Cyclomatic Complexity and Too Many Methods etc.

For more info : http://pmd.sourceforge.net

> CodePro

(*) Generates detail reports of violation of rules.
(*) Rules can be applied to most advanced frameworks like EJB4, Spring, Struts etc.
(*) JUnit Test cases can be generated from source code.
(*) Most active

For more info : http://eclipse-cs.sourceforge.net

> FindBugs

For more info : http://code.google.com/javadevtools/codepro/doc/features/audit/audit.html

> Eclipse Built-In Code Style

Best approach would be using CodePro with Eclipse Built in code style.