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The SonarQube for Eclipse documentation explains everything you need to know about using this advanced linter to write high quality code in your IDE.

What is SonarQube for IDE?

SonarQube for IDE is a free and open-source IDE plugin for automatic code review and static analysis brought to you by Sonar. It’s your first line of defense, designed to detect coding issues in real-time for 21 languages, frameworks, and IaC platforms; the complete list is available on the Rules and languages page.

Your code is checked against an extensive set of rules that cover many attributes of code, such as maintainability, reliability, and security issues. It’s possible to analyze more rules, assign issues, share quality profiles, and more, with your team when running in connected mode with SonarQube (Server, Cloud) or SonarQube Community Build. See the Connected mode page for more details.

Sonar’s IDE extensions are available for IntelliJ (and other JetBrains IDEs), Visual Studio, VS Code, and Eclipse, and can be installed directly from your IDE’s plugin marketplace. SonarQube for IDE leverages over 5,000 language-specific rules.

Achieving high quality code

SonarQube sets high standards for all code that results in secure, reliable, and maintainable software that is essential to maintaining a healthy codebase. This applies to all code: source code, test code, infrastructure as code, glue code, scripts, and more.

All new code, whether added or recently modified, should adhere to quality standards. SonarQube for IDE achieves this by providing automated code reviews that alert you to potential issues within your code. This helps you maintain high standards and focus on code quality, ultimately leading to a healthier codebase over time.

SonarQube (Server, Cloud) and SonarQube Community Build come with a built-in quality profile designed for each supported language, called the Sonar way profile. The Sonar way activates a set of rules that should be applicable to most projects and is a starting point to help you implement good practices in your organization.

The SonarQube solution

SonarQube is designed to help you achieve a state of high-quality code. By linking SonarQube for IDE with SonarQube (Server, Cloud) and SonarQube Community Build, automated code analysis and reviews are performed at every stage of the development process; we call this the SonarQube solution. This means your project settings, new code definitions, and quality profiles are applied locally to an analysis in the IDE. The SonarQube solution is designed to help you achieve a state of high-quality code. Your project settings, new code definitions, and the quality profiles managed in SonarQube (Server, Cloud) or SonarQube Community Build are applied locally to an analysis in the IDE.

  • SonarQube for IDE brings automated code reviews directly into your development environment, helping you catch issues as you write code. By providing immediate feedback, it enables engineers to identify and fix problems before they even commit, ensuring cleaner, higher-quality code from the start.

  • Then, SonarQube (Server, Cloud) delivers powerful static code analysis by thoroughly reviewing each pull request before it’s merged. This proactive approach adds an essential layer of protection, ensuring code quality and preventing issues from entering your codebase. See the pull request pages in the server documentation for more details:

  • Finally, SonarQube (Server, Cloud) and SonarQube Community Build seamlessly integrate into your CI/CD pipeline, analyzing code on every build. By leveraging quality profiles and quality gates, they automatically block code with issues from being released to production, ensuring only maintainable, reliable, and secure code makes it through.

The SonarQube solution helps you incorporate a proper methodology by helping engineers pay attention to new code. Focusing on new code during development ensures that all code released for production will be incrementally improved over time.

Connected Mode

Connected mode joins SonarQube for IDE with SonarQube (Server, Cloud) or SonarQube Community Build to deliver the full Sonar solution. SonarQube for IDE and SonarQube Server 2025.1+, SonarQube Cloud, or SonarQube Community Build analyses help to ensure that only high-quality code makes it into your project.

Be sure to check out all of the benefits when using Connected mode.

Getting started

Now that you’ve heard about how SonarQube for IDE can help you write high-quality code, you are ready to try it out for yourself. After installing SonarQube for Visual Studio in your IDE from the Marketplace, open a project using a supported language and let it run an analysis.

See the Getting started, Rules and languages, and Running an analysis pages for more information.

The Investigating issues page will show you how to find issues in the IDE, and the Fixing issues page explains how to start addressing issues in your code as you write.

Learn more

Check out the entire suite of Sonar products: SonarQube Server, SonarQube Cloud, and SonarQube for IDE.

Then, have a look at the types of issues that SonarQube for IDE detects when combined with SonarQube Server and SonarQube Cloud, and browse a full list of Sonar Rules and Rule Descriptions available for static code analysis.

Staying connected

Use the following links to follow SonarQube for Eclipse behind the scenes:

And if you need help, visit our online community to search for answers and reach out with questions!

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