PHP_CodeSniffer task is in the current Phing branch

A few days ago I was evaluating the need for writing a Phing task for the awesome PHP_CodeSniffer Pear package and noticed that Dirk Thomas blessedly already added one to the current Phing Svn branch. That's again extending the range of available tools that PHP's Continuous Integration(CI) toolchain has to offer and I quess there are more to follow, as Manuel Pichler just announced the development start of PHP_Depend.

To get the 2.3 Phing branch including the mentioned PHP_CodeSniffer task and it's documentation simply run a svn checkout http://svn.phing.info/branches/2.3 /path/to/phing-checkout-dir and you're ready to add continuous monitoring of coding standard adherence to your builds.

For simplifying the integration of the just checked out Phing 'branch' release into an existing Pear environment you can build a new Pear package by calling the buildfile in /path/to/phing-checkout-dir/pear. The built Pear package will be located in /path/to/phing-checkout-dir/pear/build and can than be used to switch the installed Phing Pear release.

Also make sure you have installed the underlying PHP_CodeSniffer Pear package via the Pear Installer.

Although the task is very well documented the next code snippet shows the shiny PHP_CodeSniffer task in an example build file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="example" default="build" basedir=".">

   <target name="build" depends="clean, svn-checkout, code-inspection, test">

   ...

   </target>

   ...

   <target name="code-inspection" description="runs code inspection on the stated directory">
     <phpcodesniffer standard="PEAR"
                     format="summary"
                     tabWidth="4"
                     file="/path/to/source-files"
                     allowedFileExtensions="php"/>
     </phpcodesniffer>
   </target>

</project>