Checkstyle 13.9.0 cannot be used due to removal of JavadocStyleCheck

In the latest version of Checkstyle (13.9.0), they removed the class com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc.JavadocStyleCheck (see this issue)

The current src/checkstyle/checkstyle.xml includes this check, so whenever I run the newest version of checkstyle with the configuration file from spring-javaformat, I get the following error

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-checkstyle-plugin:3.6.0:check (default-cli) on project group-management-api: Execution default-cli of goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-checkstyle-plugin:3.6.0:check failed: cannot initialize module com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.TreeWalker - cannot initialize module com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc.JavadocStyleCheck: Unable to instantiate 'com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc.JavadocStyleCheck' class, it is also not possible to instantiate it as null. Please recheck that class name is specified as canonical name or read how to configure short name usage https://checkstyle.org/config.html#Packages. Please also recheck that provided ClassLoader to Checker is configured correctly. -> [Help 1]

The only way to fix this is to remove the check from the configuration file. The linked issue above mentions what checks could replace the check that has been removed.

@solidjb

Right now, this does not work:

diff --git a/etc/checkstyle/config.xml b/etc/checkstyle/config.xml
index c5351c4..07cb4ca 100644
--- a/etc/checkstyle/config.xml
+++ b/etc/checkstyle/config.xml
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@
                <property name="excludes" value="io.spring.javaformat.checkstyle.check.SpringHeaderCheck"/>
                <property name="excludes" value="io.spring.javaformat.checkstyle.check.SpringLambdaCheck"/>
                <property name="excludes" value="com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc.JavadocMethodCheck"/>
+               <property name="excludes" value="com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.javadoc.JavadocStyleCheck"/>
        </module>
        <module name="NewlineAtEndOfFile"/>
        <module name="SuppressWarningsFilter"/>

Fails with the same error.

I wonder how you did remove it from "the" config file, @solidjb ? Do you refer to your personal one or the spring java formatter main?

@michael-simons

@michael-simons - I didn’t get it to to work because the class is no longer in the checkstyle jar. It has to be explicitly removed from the spring configuration file inside of the spring-javaformat jar

Replace JavadocStyleCheck with more focused javadoc checks

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Checkstyle 13.9.0 cannot be used due to removal of JavadocStyleCheck #479

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Checkstyle 13.9.0 cannot be used due to removal of JavadocStyleCheck #479

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michael-simons commented on Aug 7, 2026

solidjb commented on Aug 7, 2026

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