Analysis Parameters

Project analysis settings can be configured in multiple places. Here is the hierarchy:

  • Global properties, defined in the UI, apply to all projects (From the top bar, go to Administration > Configuration > General Settings)

  • Project properties, defined in the UI, override global property values (At a project level, go to Administration > General Settings)

  • Project analysis parameters, defined in a project analysis configuration file or an analyzer configuration file, override the ones defined in the UI

  • Analysis / Command line parameters, defined when launching an analysis (with -D on the command line), override project analysis parameters

Note that only parameters set through the UI are stored in the database. For example, if you override the sonar.exclusions parameter via command line for a specific project, it will not be stored in the database. Subsequent analyses, or analyses in SonarLint with connected mode, would still be executed with the exclusions defined in the UI and therefore stored in the DB.

Most of the property keys shown in the interface at both global and project levels can also be set as analysis parameters, but the parameters listed below can only be set at analysis time.

For language-specific parameters related to test coverage and execution, see Test Coverage & Execution.
For language-specific parameters related to external issue reports, see External Issues.

Mandatory Parameters

Server

Key Description Default
sonar.host.url the server URL http://localhost:9000

Project Configuration

Key Description Default
sonar.projectKey The project's unique key. Allowed characters are: letters, numbers, -, _, . and :, with at least one non-digit. For Maven projects, this defaults to <groupId>:<artifactId>

Optional Parameters

Project Identity

Key Description Default
sonar.projectName Name of the project that will be displayed on the web interface. <name> for Maven projects, otherwise project key. If not provided and there is already a name in the DB, it won't be overwritten
sonar.projectVersion The project version. <version> for Maven projects, otherwise "not provided"

Authentication

If the "Anyone" pseudo-group does not have permission to perform analyses, you'll need to supply the credentials of a user with Execute Analysis permission for the analysis to run under.

Key Description Default
sonar.login The login or authentication token of a SonarQube user with Execute Analysis permission on the project.
sonar.password The password that goes with the sonar.login username. This should be left blank if an authentication token is being used.

Web Services

Key Description Default
sonar.ws.timeout Maximum time to wait for the response of a Web Service call (in seconds). Modifying this value from the default is useful only when you're experiencing timeouts during analysis while waiting for the server to respond to Web Service calls. 60

Project Configuration

Key Description Default
sonar.projectDescription The project description. <description> for Maven projects
sonar.links.homepage Project home page. <url> for Maven projects
sonar.links.ci Continuous integration. <ciManagement><url> for Maven projects
sonar.links.issue Issue tracker. <issueManagement><url> for Maven projects
sonar.links.scm Project source repository. <scm><url> for Maven projects
sonar.sources Comma-separated paths to directories containing main source files. Read from build system for Maven, Gradle, MSBuild projects. Defaults to project base directory when neither sonar.sources nor sonar.tests is provided.
sonar.tests Comma-separated paths to directories containing test source files. Read from build system for Maven, Gradle, MSBuild projects. Else default to empty.
sonar.sourceEncoding Encoding of the source files. Ex: UTF-8, MacRoman, Shift_JIS. This property can be replaced by the standard property project.build.sourceEncoding in Maven projects. The list of available encodings depends on your JVM. System encoding
sonar.externalIssuesReportPaths Comma-delimited list of paths to Generic Issue reports.
sonar.projectDate Assign a date to the analysis. This parameter is only useful when you need to retroactively create the history of a not-analyzed-before project. The format is yyyy-MM-dd, for example: 2010-12-01. Since you cannot perform an analysis dated prior to the most recent one in the database, you must analyze recreate your project history in chronological order, oldest first. Note: You may need to adjust your housekeeping settings if you wish to create a long-running history. Current date
sonar.projectBaseDir Use this property when you need analysis to take place in a directory other than the one from which it was launched. E.G. analysis begins from jenkins/jobs/myjob/workspace but the files to be analyzed are in ftpdrop/cobol/project1. The path may be relative or absolute. Specify not the the source directory, but some parent of the source directory. The value specified here becomes the new "analysis directory", and other paths are then specified as though the analysis were starting from the specified value of sonar.projectBaseDir. Note that the analysis process will need write permissions in this directory; it is where the sonar.working.directory will be created.
sonar.working.directory Set the working directory for an analysis triggered with the SonarScanner or the SonarScanner for Ant (versions greater than 2.0). This property is not compatible with the SonarScanner for MSBuild. Path must be relative, and unique for each project. Beware: the specified folder is deleted before each analysis. .scannerwork
sonar.scm.provider This property can be used to explicitly tell SonarQube which SCM plugin should be used to grab SCM data on the project (in case auto-detection does not work). The value of this property is always lowercase and depends on the plugin (ex. "tfvc" for the TFVC plugin). Check the documentation page of each plugin for more.
sonar.scm.forceReloadAll By default, blame information is only retrieved for changed files. Set this property to true to load blame information for all files. This can be useful is you feel that some SCM data is outdated but SonarQube does not get the latest information from the SCM engine.
sonar.scm.exclusions.disabled For supported engines, files ignored by the SCM, i.e. files listed in .gitignore, will automatically be ignored by analysis too. Set this property to true to disable that feature.
sonar.scm.revision Overrides the revision, for instance the Git sha1, displayed in analysis results. By default value is provided by the CI environment or guessed by the checked-out sources.
sonar.buildString The string passed with this property will be stored with the analysis and available in the results of api/project_analyses/search, thus allowing you to later identify a specific analysis and obtain its ID for use with api/project_analyses/set_baseline.
sonar.analysis.[yourKey] This property stub allows you to insert custom key/value pairs into the analysis context, which will also be passed forward to webhooks.

Duplications

Key Description Default
sonar.cpd.${language}.minimumtokens A piece of code is considered duplicated as soon as there are at least 100 duplicated tokens in a row (override with sonar.cpd.${language}.minimumTokens) spread across at least 10 lines of code (override with sonar.cpd.${language}.minimumLines). For Java projects, a piece of code is considered duplicated when there is a series of at least 10 statements in a row, regardless of the number of tokens and lines. This threshold cannot be overridden. 100
sonar.cpd.${language}.minimumLines (see above) 10

Analysis Logging

Key Description Default
sonar.log.level Control the quantity / level of logs produced during an analysis. DEBUG: Display INFO logs + more details at DEBUG level. Similar to sonar.verbose=true. TRACE: Display DEBUG logs + the timings of all ElasticSearch queries and Web API calls executed by the SonarScanner. INFO
sonar.verbose Add more detail to both client and server-side analysis logs. Activates DEBUG mode for the scanner, and adds client-side environment variables and system properties to server-side log of analysis report processing. NOTE: There is the potential for this setting to expose sensitive information such as passwords if they are stored as server-side environment variables. false
sonar.showProfiling Display logs to see where the analyzer spends time. This parameter generates a file containing these timing infos in <workingDir>/profiling/<moduleKey>-profiler.xml where <workingDir> is: .sonar/profiling/ when analysis is run with SonarScanner, and target/sonar/profiling/ when SonarScanner for Maven is used. false
sonar.scanner.dumpToFile Outputs to the specified file the full list of properties passed to the scanner API as a means to debug analysis.
sonar.scanner.metadataFilePath Set the location where the scanner writes the report-task.txt file containing among other things the ceTaskId. value of sonar.working.directory

Deprecated

These parameters are listed for completeness, but are deprecated and should not be used in new analyses.

Key Description
sonar.links.scm_dev Deprecated since SQ 7.1 Developer connection. <scm><developerConnection> for Maven projects