How to upgrade to new Community Build

SonarQube Server / Community Build
1

Hi all, I’m currently on 9.9.8 LTA version.
We’re considering upgrading to a more recent version.
I cannot find detailed information on suggested upgrade procedure, expecially now that new Community Build numbering scheme has been deployed and there is no more the concept of LTA version.
The official documentation of the community build leads to the server upgrade procedure (Determining the server upgrade path | SonarQube Server Documentation), which however refers to LTA.
Questions:

  • Is it possible to upgrade from 9.9.8 LTA directly to 24.12 or 25.1?
  • Which are the rule for deciding upgrade path? Are there any intermediate step now that LTA is no more?
  • What about upgrading from 24.12 to 25.x? Is it possible to upgrade between any version to any other version skipping intermediate versions or not?

IMHO documentation should be fixed to answer this questions (or I may be missing some part of the documentation)

2

Hey @gabri

We agree that the documentation currently available isn’t very helpful in determining upgrade paths for Community Build. We’re working on improving it.

I can tell you that you can upgrade directly from 9.9.8 to 24.12 or 25.1.

25.1 is the only “active” version of Community Build, so I recommend that you target that version.

4

Thanks, this was very helpful, as I was in a very similar situation, about to upgrade from 10.2.

Going forward, do you know if there will be similar upgrade paths, given that there are no more LTAs?
Although by the time we do another upgrade, the docs will probably catch up.

5

It’s still an open topic internally and we haven’t settled on an answer.

We don’t want to maintain database migrations forever, which we why we used to drop them after LTA releases.

At the same time, the easier we can make it for users to upgrade to the latest version, the more users will probably upgrade!

So the honest truth is we don’t yet. If we introduce any new paradigm for what “pit stops” have to made, you can be sure we’ll document them.

(This is my newest pet project, a handy upgrade calculator)

6

Great to know! I will surely be paying attention to this.

That upgrade calculator is awesome, hope it get’s to the official documentation!

7

Colin,

thank you for your answer.
However, IMHO, time is passing, 25.02 is out and upgrade documentation is becoming more and more obsolete, to the point of being actively misleading. For instance upgrade path is suggesting to go from LTA to LTA, which clearly is not correct for community edition and does not say anything of the new numbering scheme.
I also wrongly think at first that 2025.1 and 25.1 was same edition.
There is also one other post of an error stemming from an upgrade from 10.8 to developer 2025.1, while probably the correct target version would have been community 25.2.
Edition names, numbering scheme and upgrade path have changed together. And the upgrade documentation does not reflect correctly these changes, at all.
Not to mention new MQR, which is interesting but disruptive to introduce, at least for us.
Right now upgrading is a bit of a pain, to be honest, upgrade documentation should be revised as soon as possible (I would like an ETA, to prepare upgrade, if possible).
The upgrade calculator is indeed a great pet project, kudos to you, and it should be promoted to official, like Gitlab similar webapp.
Thank you

8

Hey @gabri

Thanks for your patience on this topic and your candid feedback. I expect to have more to share with you soon and updated docs are on the way.

I’m happy to let you know that we are planning to integrate into the docs officially. That will take some time, but it’s coming.

9

Hey @gabri

It took a little longer than expected, but we have updated the docs for SonarQube Community Build. You can find the docs here.

To summarize: For Community Build, you will need to update to the December release in a given year before moving. Effectively – December releases of SonarQube Community Build will behave as LTA releases do for SonarQube Server (milestone releases you must upgrade though).

Today the upgrade path from 9.9 is 9.9 → 24.12 → 25.3

In January 2026, the upgrade path from 9.9 will be 9.9 → 24.12 → 25.12 → 26.01.

Strictly speaking, because we are late in deciding this, it is technically possible to upgrade from 9.9 directly to 25.3. This will not be possible starting from 25.4.

I’ve updated my upgrade calculator, which is still being targeted for inclusion in the official docs.

10

Thank you @Colin, this definitely shed light on the procedure to follow to upgrade!

11

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