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SonarQube SonarScanner reference for STO

You can run scans and ingest results from SonarQube SonarScanner to analyze your code repos and ensure that they are secure, reliable, readable, and modular, among other key attributes.

Important notes for running SonarQube scans in STO​

  • STO supports repository scanning only for SonarScanner.
  • STO supports all languages supported by SonarScanner.
  • Before you scan your repo, make sure that you perform any prerequisites for the language used in your repo. For details about specific language requirements, go to the SonarQube language reference.
  • By default, STO allocates 500Mi memory for the Sonarqube scan container. This should be enough for Ingestion scans. For Orchestration and Extraction scans, Harness recommends that you allocate at least 2GB for the container. You can customize resource limits in the Set Container Resources section of the SonarQube scan step.
  • You need to run the scan step with root access if you need to add trusted certificates to your scan images at runtime.
  • You can set up your STO scan images and pipelines to run scans as non-root and establish trust for your own proxies using self-signed certificates. For more information, go to Configure STO to Download Images from a Private Registry.

Root access requirements​

If you want to add trusted certificates to your scan images at runtime, you need to run the scan step with root access.

You can set up your STO scan images and pipelines to run scans as non-root and establish trust for your proxies using custom certificates. For more information, go to Configure STO to Download Images from a Private Registry.

For more information​

The following topics contain useful information for setting up scanner integrations in STO:

SonarQube step settings for STO scans​

The recommended workflow is to add a SonarQube step to a Security Tests or CI Build stage and then configure it as described below.

A Docker-in-Docker background step is not required for this workflow.

Scan​

Scan Mode​

  • Orchestration Configure the step to run a scan and then ingest, normalize, and deduplicate the results.

Scan Configuration​

The predefined configuration to use for the scan. All scan steps have at least one configuration.

Target​

Type​

  • Repository Scan a codebase repo.

    In most cases, you specify the codebase using a code repo connector that connects to the Git account or repository where your code is stored. For information, go to Configure codebase.

Detect target and variant​

When auto-detect is enabled for code repositories, the step detects these values using git:

  • To detect the target, the step runs git config --get remote.origin.url.
  • To detect the variant, the step runs git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD. The default assumption is that the HEAD branch is the one you want to scan.

Note the following:

  • Auto-detection is not available when the Scan Mode is Ingestion.
  • Auto-detect is the default selection for new pipelines. Manual is the default for old pipelines, but you might find that neither radio button is selected in the UI.

Name​

The identifier for the target, such as codebaseAlpha or jsmith/myalphaservice. Descriptive target names make it much easier to navigate your scan data in the STO UI.

It is good practice to specify a baseline for every target.

Variant​

The identifier for the specific variant to scan. This is usually the branch name, image tag, or product version. Harness maintains a historical trend for each variant.

Workspace​

The workspace path on the pod running the scan step. The workspace path is /harness by default.

You can override this if you want to scan only a subset of the workspace. For example, suppose the pipeline publishes artifacts to a subfolder /tmp/artifacts and you want to scan these artifacts only. In this case, you can specify the workspace path as /harness/tmp/artifacts.

Ingestion File​

The path to your scan results when running an Ingestion scan, for example /shared/scan_results/myscan.latest.sarif.

  • The data file must be in a supported format for the scanner.

  • The data file must be accessible to the scan step. It's good practice to save your results files to a shared path in your stage. In the visual editor, go to the stage where you're running the scan. Then go to Overview > Shared Paths. You can also add the path to the YAML stage definition like this:

        - stage:
          spec:
            sharedPaths:
              - /shared/scan_results

Authentication​

Domain​

The URL of the SonarQube server. Required for Orchestration and Extraction scans. This value corresponds to the sonar.host.url setting in SonarQube.

The fully-qualified URL to the scanner.

Enforce SSL​

The step and the scanner communicate over SSL by default. Set this to false to disable SSL (not safe).

Access Token​

The access token to log in to the scanner. In most cases this is a password or an API key.

You should create a Harness text secret with your encrypted token and reference the secret using the format <+secrets.getValue("project.my-access-token")>. For more information, go to Add and Reference Text Secrets.

note

Harness recommends that you use a SonarQube user token that includes permissions to run scans and to create projects.

If you use a project token, you must have access to the SonarQube project that you want to scan.

For more information, go to Generating and using tokens in the SonarQube documentation.

Scan Tool​

Exclude​

If you want to exclude some files from a scan, you can use this setting to configure the sonar.exclusions in your SonarQube project. For more information, go to Narrowing the Focus in the SonarQube docs.

Java Libraries​

A comma-separated list of paths to files with third-party libraries used by your tests. For SonarQube scans, this corresponds to the sonar.java.libraries parameter.

Java Binaries​

A comma-separated list of paths to the folders with the bytecode files you want to scan. For SonarQube scans, this corresponds to the sonar.java.binaries parameter.

Log Level​

The minimum severity of the messages you want to include in your scan logs. You can specify one of the following:

  • DEBUG
  • INFO
  • WARNING
  • ERROR

Additional CLI flags​

You can add CLI flags to run the sonar-scanner binary with specific command-line arguments. Here are some examples:

  • -sonar.ws.timeout=300: Suppose the scan is experiencing timeouts due to long response times from a web service. This flag increases the timeout window.

  • -Dsonar.projectName=<project_name>: The project name.

  • -Dsonar.projectVersion=<version_number>: The project version to scan.

  • -Dsonar.projectKey=<project_key>: The unique key of the project to scan.

  • -Dsonar.test.exclusions=**src/test/**/*.*: The test files to exclude from the scan.

YAML example​
              - step:
                  type: Sonarqube
                  spec:
                    advanced:
                      args:
                        cli: "-Dsonar.projectVersion=1.2.3"
caution

Passing additional CLI flags is an advanced feature. Harness recommends the following best practices:

  • Test your flags and arguments thoroughly before you use them in your Harness pipelines. Some flags might not work in the context of STO.

  • Don't add flags that are already used in the default configuration of the scan step.

    To check the default configuration, go to a pipeline execution where the scan step ran with no additional flags. Check the log output for the scan step. You should see a line like this:

    Command [ scancmd -f json -o /tmp/output.json ]

    In this case, don't add -f or -o to Additional CLI flags.

Fail on Severity​

Every Security step has a Fail on Severity setting. If the scan finds any vulnerability with the specified severity level or higher, the pipeline fails automatically. You can specify one of the following:

  • CRITICAL
  • HIGH
  • MEDIUM
  • LOW
  • INFO
  • NONE — Do not fail on severity

The YAML definition looks like this: fail_on_severity : critical # | high | medium | low | info | none

Settings​

Use this field to add environment variables to your SonarQube scans. For example, you can add proxy settings if your SonarQube instance is behind a proxy.

Additional Configuration​

In the Additional Configuration settings, you can use the following options:

Advanced settings​

In the Advanced settings, you can use the following options:

SonarQube pull-request scan configuration​

To implement a SonarQube pull-request scan, include the following arguments in Additional CLI flags. Use trigger variables for the pull request ID and branch:

YAML configuration example
              - step:
                  type: Sonarqube
                  # ...
                  spec:
                    mode: orchestration
                    config: default
                    # ...
                    advanced:
                      log:
                        level: debug
                      args:
                        cli: "-Dsonar.pullrequest.key=<+trigger.prNumber> -Dsonar.pullrequest.branch=<+trigger.sourceBranch> -Dsonar.pullrequest.base=<+trigger.targetBranch> "
                    # ...

SonarQube proxy settings​

If there's a proxy between your Harness pipeline and your SonarQube server, you can add your proxy settings under Settings. For example:

  • JVM_HTTP_PROXY_HOST : my-proxy.ca.myorg.org

  • JVM_HTTP_PROXY_PORT : 3735

  • JVM_HTTPS_PROXY_HOST : my-proxy.ca.myorg.org

  • JVM_HTTPS_PROXY_PORT : 3745

  • JVM_NO_PROXY : sonar.myorg.local

Troubleshoot Sonar Scans​

Can't generate SonarQube report due to shallow clone​

  • Error message: Shallow clone detected, no blame information will be provided. You can convert to non-shallow with 'git fetch --unshallow
  • Cause: If the depth setting in your pipeline's codebase configuration is shallow, SonarQube can't generate a report. This is a known SonarQube issue.
  • Solution: Change the depth to 0.

Add the sonar.projectVersion to a Harness pipeline​

In your SonarQube step, declare -Dsonar.projectVersion under Additional CLI Flags.

SonarQube doesn't scan the main branch and pull request branches in the same pipeline​

info

Harness introduced a fix in STO release 1.83.1 to provide better support for orchestrated branch and pull-request scanning with SonarQube Enterprise.

  • With this fix, the orchestration step always downloads results for the scanned branch or pull request.
  • Branch scans require no additional configuration.
  • To configure pull-request scans, go to SonarQube pull-request scan configuration.

If SonarQube doesn't scan both the main branch and pull request (PR) branches within the same pipeline, it might indicate an issue with the pull request setup in SonarQube.

One potential solution involves configuring conditional arguments within the Harness Platform to handle PR and branch scan requests separately. To implement this solution, you can use conditional executions to run specific steps based on whether it's a PR scan request or a branch scan request. For example, your conditional executions could use JEXL expressions with codebase variables like <+codebase.build.type>=="branch" or <+codebase.build.type>=="pr".

This approach ensures proper configuration and execution of SonarQube scans for both main and PR branches within your pipeline.