I had Gendarme 2.10 installed and was working with violations plugin, however I upgraded to 2.11 I suddenly got the following error:
ERROR: Build step failed with exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
at hudson.plugins.violations.types.gendarme.GendarmeParser.parseViolations(GendarmeParser.java:181)
at hudson.plugins.violations.types.gendarme.GendarmeParser.parse(GendarmeParser.java:74)
at hudson.plugins.violations.ViolationsCollector.doType(ViolationsCollector.java:187)
at hudson.plugins.violations.ViolationsCollector.invoke(ViolationsCollector.java:114)
at hudson.plugins.violations.ViolationsCollector.invoke(ViolationsCollector.java:25)
at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:990)
at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:968)
at hudson.plugins.violations.ViolationsPublisher.perform(ViolationsPublisher.java:74)
at hudson.tasks.BuildStepMonitor$3.perform(BuildStepMonitor.java:45)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.perform(AbstractBuild.java:782)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.performAllBuildSteps(AbstractBuild.java:723)
at hudson.model.Build$BuildExecution.post2(Build.java:185)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.post(AbstractBuild.java:668)
at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1763)
at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:43)
at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:98)
at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:410)
Build step 'Report Violations' marked build as failure
Downgrading back to gendarme 2.10 fixes the problem