The SonarQube Runner is recommended as the default launcher to analyze a project with SonarQube.

Prerequisites

You must have previously installed the SonarQube Runner and read Analyzing Code Source.

Usage

Simple Project

Create a configuration file in the root directory of the project: sonar-project.properties

# required metadata
sonar.projectKey=my:project
sonar.projectName=My project
sonar.projectVersion=1.0

# optional description
sonar.projectDescription=Fake description

# path to source directories (required)
sonar.sources=srcDir1,srcDir2

# path to test source directories (optional)
sonar.tests=testDir1,testDir2

# path to project binaries (optional), for example directory of Java bytecode
sonar.binaries=binDir

# optional comma-separated list of paths to libraries. Only path to JAR file is supported.
sonar.libraries=path/to/library/*.jar,path/to/specific/library/myLibrary.jar,parent/*/*.jar

# The value of the property must be the key of the language.
sonar.language=cobol

# Additional parameters
sonar.my.property=value

Run the following command from the project base directory to launch the analysis:

sonar-runner

Security

Since SonarQube3.4, if a project cannot be accessed anonymously, the sonar.login and sonar.password properties are required to run an analysis on this project. These properties have to be set to the credentials of a user having the 'User' role on this project. You can set them either:

• directly on the command line by adding -Dsonar.login=myUser -Dsonar.password=myPassword
• or in the sonar-project.properties project configuration file
• or in the sonar-runner.properties global configuration file

A project cannot be anonymously accessed when either:

• the sonar.forceAuthentication property is set to true
• or the sonar.forceAuthentication property is set to false and the Anyone group has not been granted a User role on the project

Project Samples

To help you getting started, for each language, a simple project sample is available on github that can be browsed or downloaded: projects/languages

Multi-module Project

There are two ways to define a multi-module structure in SonarQube:

	Using the given file structure...	... with the given 'properties' files
Way #1 Set all the configuration in the properties file in the root folder		# Root project information sonar.projectKey=org.mycompany.myproject sonar.projectName=My Project sonar.projectVersion=1.0-SNAPSHOT # Some properties that will be inherited by the modules sonar.sources=src # List of the module identifiers sonar.modules=module1,module2 # Properties can obviously be overriden for # each module - just prefix them with the module ID module1.sonar.projectName=Module 1 module2.sonar.projectName=Module 2
Way #2 Set the configuration in multiple properties files		# Root project information sonar.projectKey=org.mycompany.myproject sonar.projectName=My Project sonar.projectVersion=1.0-SNAPSHOT # Some properties that will be inherited by the modules sonar.sources=src # List of the module identifiers sonar.modules=module1,module2 # Redefine properties # Note that you do not need to prefix the property here sonar.projectName=Module 1 # Redefine properties # Note that you do not need to prefix the property here sonar.projectName=Module 2

Noteworthy:

• Properties are inherited from parent to children 
  They can obviously be overriden:
  
  • By prefixing them with the module identifier (way #1)
  • Simply by defining them in the sonar-project.properties file located in the module (way #2)
    
    
• Module base directory can be specified for special cases
  By default, the module base directory is guessed from the module identifier (like in the examples above). But it can be redefined using the sonar.projectBaseDir property.
  For instance, here are two use cases and the way to redefine the base directory of the modules:
  

  • the folder of a module contains white spaces or special characters:

    module1.sonar.projectBaseDir=My Module One

      

  • the module is not located directly in the parent folder, but in a deeper directory structure:

    module1.sonar.projectBaseDir=modules/mod1 module2.sonar.projectBaseDir=modules/mod2

      

To help you getting started, multi-module project samples are available on github that can be browsed or downloaded:

• Modules with the same structure: projects/multi-module/sonar-runner/java-sonar-runner-modules-same-structure
• Modules with different structures: projects/multi-module/sonar-runner/java-sonar-runner-modules-different-structures
• A configuration file for each module: projects/multi-module/sonar-runner/java-sonar-runner-modules-own-configuration-file

Multi-module and Multi-language Project

Since SonarQube3.3, it is possible to run an analysis on a multi-module project whose modules contains source code from different languages.

In addition to the multi-module configuration, the only mandatory property to set is the language for each module:

module1.sonar.language=java
module2.sonar.language=js
...

To help you getting started, a multi-language project sample is available on github that can be browsed or downloaded: projects/languages/multi-language/multi-language-java-javascript-sonar-runner

Running Task

Before SonarQube3.6, it was only possible to run a project analysis. Since SonarQube3.6, it is possible to run other tasks such as:

# To run the computation of views (Views plugin is required)
sonar-runner views

# To run the computation of reports (Report plugin is required)
sonar-runner report

# To run the computation of developers data (Developer Cockpit plugin is required)
sonar-runner devcockpit

Advanced Usage

If a sonar-project.properties file cannot be created in the root directory of the project, there are several alternatives:

• The properties can be specified directly through the command line. Ex:

  sonar-runner -Dsonar.projectKey=myproject -Dsonar.sources=src1

    

• The property 'project.settings' can be used to specify the path to the project configuration file (this option is incompatible with the 'project.home' property). Ex:

  sonar-runner -Dproject.settings=../myproject.properties

    

The root folder of the project to analyze can be set through the 'project.home' property. This folder must contain a sonar-project.properties file if the mandatory properties (like sonar.projectKey) are not specified on the command line.

Additional analysis parameters can be defined in this project configuration file or through command-line parameters. 

Troubleshootings

export SONAR_RUNNER_OPTS="-Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m"

set SONAR_RUNNER_OPTS=-Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m

Migrating from SonarQube Runner 1.X to SonarQube Runner 2.0

Replace the following properties in the sonar-project.properties file:

• sources => sonar.sources
• tests => sonar.tests
• binaries => sonar.binaries
• libraries => sonar.libraries