Visual Studio Code – Enable -Xlint for VSCode Java Compiling

The Java extensions for VSCode do an excellent job of catching most warnings, but recently I came across several warnings in my project that VSCode was not reporting but which I found through compiling using the -Xlint flag.

Take this SSCCE for example:

public class Test
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        int x = 3;
        int y = (int)x;

        System.out.println(y);
    }
}

This code runs perfectly fine with no warnings in VSCode, but if you compile it with javac -Xlint Test.java, you will get this:

Test.java:6: warning: [cast] redundant cast to int
        int y = (int)x;
                ^      
1 warning

What I would like is a way of having these warnings get reported in VSCode just like other warnings (where they are highlighted with yellow squiggles that you can mouse over). I have tried, unsuccessfully, to see if there was a way of changing the default javac compiler arguments but have not found the configuration option (if it exists).

And the above warning is just a single example of things VSCode does not appear to report. I have found other warnings through using the -Xlint flag as well, such as fields that should be marked transient that are not.