Scanner environment

The table below describes what is required to run the scanner that performs analysis.

Additional requirements may exist for specific scanners or languages. Check the respective SonarScanner page in Advanced setup > CI-based analysis and language pages in Advanced setup for possible additional requirements. In particular, to analyze JavaScript, TypeScript, or CSS, additional requirements exist: see JavaScript/TypeScript/CSS.

If JRE auto-provisioning is not supported

This section describes the actions you may need to take depending on your environment in order to make sure the required Java version is used for the analysis. 

GitHub Actions

The SonarCloud GitHub Action can be configured for different target build technologies. You can find samples for .NET, Gradle, Maven and a generic one, all running with JDK11 here. 

Maven / Gradle

If your whole Maven or Gradle build doesn't run on Java 17, we suggest first to try to base the whole build on one of those versions of Java. If it's not compatible, then you can override the JAVA_HOME environment variable just before the analysis step, as shown here:

# Maven
mvn verify ...
export JAVA_HOME=/path/to/java17
mvn sonar:sonar ...

# Gradle
gradle build ...
export JAVA_HOME=/path/to/java17
gradle sonarqube ...

Azure DevOps

All VM images available in Azure Pipelines for Microsoft-hosted agents already contain Java 17. There is no further action required. For self-hosted agents, you must ensure that you are using Java 17. You can either modify your build pipeline to ensure that it runs with Java 17 by default, or override the JAVA_HOME environment variable just before running the analysis.

Xamarin

For the specific case of Xamarin, which only allows Java 8, you will need to specify a Java 8 path separately when invoking MSBuild (using, for example, XAMARIN_JAVA_HOME), and then leave the JAVA_HOME environment variable for the scanner only.

$env:JAVA_HOME=/path/to/java17
$env:XAMARIN_JAVA_HOME=/path/to/java8
msbuild.exe  /p:JavaSdkDirectory=$env:XAMARIN_JAVA_HOME

Dockerfile

Multiple base images can be used to run your build with Java 17, here are some examples:

• openjdk:17-jdk-slim
• gradle:8.2.0-jdk17-jammy

If your build is not compatible with Java 17, then you can override the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to Java 17 immediately before running the scanners.

Jenkins

You can easily define a new JDK version by navigating to Manage Jenkins > Global Tool Configuration if you have the JDK Tool Plugin installed.

Declarative pipelines

If you are using a declarative pipeline with different stages, you can add a 'tools' section to the stage in which the code scan occurs. This will make the scanner use the JDK version that is specified.

stage('SonarCloud analysis') {
    tools {
        jdk "jdk17" // the name you have given the JDK installation in Global Tool Configuration
    }
    environment {
        scannerHome = tool 'SonarCloud Scanner' // the name you have given the Sonar Scanner (in Global Tool Configuration)
    }
    steps {
        withSonarQubeEnv(installationName: 'SonarCloud') {
            sh "${scannerHome}/bin/sonar-scanner -X"
        }
    }
}

If you are analyzing a Java 11 project, you probably want to continue using Java 11 to build your project. The following example allows you to continue building in Java 11, but will use Java 17 to scan the code:

stage('Build') {
 tools {
        jdk "jdk11" // the name you have given the JDK installation using the JDK manager (Global Tool Configuration)
    }
    steps {
        sh 'mvn compile'
    }
}
stage('SonarCloud analysis') {
    tools {
        jdk "jdk17" // the name you have given the JDK installation using the JDK manager (Global Tool Configuration)
    }
    environment {
        scannerHome = tool 'SonarCloud Scanner' // the name you have given the Sonar Scanner (Global Tool Configuration)
    }
    steps {
        withSonarQubeEnv(installationName: 'SonarCloud') {
            sh 'mvn sonar:sonar'
        }
    }
}

This example is for Maven but it can be easily modified to use Gradle.

Classical pipelines

Set Job JDK version

• Set the JDK version to be used by jobs in the General section of your configuration. This option is only visible if you have configured multiple JDK versions under Manage Jenkins > Global Tool Configuration.

Set 'Execute SonarQube Scanner' JDK version

• If you are using the "Execute SonarQube Scanner" step in your configuration, you can set the JDK for this step in the configuration dialog. By using this approach, you can use JDK 17 only for the code scanning performed by SonarCloud. All the other steps in the job will use the globally configured JDK. 

Java 11 projects

• Jenkins does not offer functionality to switch JDKs when using a Freestyle project or Maven project configuration. To build your project using Java 11,  you will have to manually set the JAVA_HOME variable to Java 17 when running the analysis.
• This can be done by using the Tool Environment Plugin. This plugin lets you expose the location of the JDK you added under Manage Jenkins > Global Tool Configuration. 
• The location of the JDK can then be used to set the JAVA_HOME variable in a post step command, like this:

export JAVA_HOME=$OPENJDK_17_HOME/Contents/Home
mvn $SONAR_MAVEN_GOAL