Apache Maven Checkstyle Plugin – checkstyle:check

Specifies the location of the XML configuration to use.

Potential values are a filesystem path, a URL, or a classpath resource. This parameter expects that the contents of the location conform to the xml format (Checkstyle Checker module) configuration of rulesets.

This parameter is resolved as resource, URL, then file. If successfully resolved, the contents of the configuration is copied into the ${project.build.directory}/checkstyle-configuration.xml file before being passed to Checkstyle as a configuration.

There are 2 predefined rulesets.