Coverage and issues not appearing in SonarQube Cloud analysis for branches (without Automatic Analys

SonarQube Cloud
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1

We are running a Maven/Java project with GitHub Actions and SonarQube Cloud. Automatic Analysis is not enabled; all analysis is triggered via a custom GitHub Actions workflow.

The analysis completes successfully and uploads to SonarQube Cloud, but the branch dashboard shows:

  • 0 new lines

  • Coverage: There is not enough lines to compute coverage

  • No issues or duplications, even though we have JaCoCo reports and Checkstyle issues.

The scanner log shows ANALYSIS SUCCESSFUL and confirms that Surefire, JaCoCo, and Checkstyle reports are being detected and imported.

Important: One step in our GitHub Actions workflow sets additional sonar.* parameters that are not present in sonar-project.properties. These parameters include the project version and any branch-specific settings.

Sonar-project.properties attached

What expected in the SonarQube cloud UI

  • JaCoCo coverage results imported and displayed

  • Checkstyle issues imported and visible

  • Branch analysis to reflect actual metrics

What actually in the SonarQube cloud UI

  • SonarQube Cloud reports successful analysis but the UI shows no coverage and no issues.

  • Logs confirm JaCoCo and Checkstyle XML files were imported.

  • SCA/Dependency analysis is skipped (we understand this requires Automatic Analysis, but our concern is specifically with coverage/issues).

  • No Automatic Analysis is enabled; all analysis is triggered manually via GitHub Actions.

  • Additional sonar.* parameters are set at runtime in the workflow, outside of sonar-project.properties.

    soar-log-coverage-checkstyle-files.zip (17.2 KB)

2

Hey there.

Based on your logs:

17:04:30.607 INFO  Branch name: story/vg-686,vg-687/ver-stamp-sonarqube, type: short-lived
17:04:30.634 INFO  Preprocessing files...
17:04:30.755 INFO  1 language detected in 8 preprocessed files (done) | time=119ms

You’re analyzing a short-lived branch. This means only the changes between your branch and the target branch are represented in the analysis results. If you’re only changing GitHub Actions files (and other properties files, like sonar-project.properties), the results will be empty.

Based on the logs, once you’ve merged this to your main branch, I expect you’ll see the full results you’re looking for. You can also adjust your long lived branch pattern if you really want to be sure prior to merging.

:warning: It looks like you’re using sonarqube-scan-action, which requires that everything be manually configured for Java projects. Instead we would generally recommend you follow the tutorial for Maven projects using the SonarScanner for Maven. That said, it seems like you know what you’re doing. :slight_smile: