IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2 and 12.6.0.84973 compatibility issue

SonarQube for IDE IntelliJ Platform
1

Please provide

  • Operating system: Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (in WSL); glibc: 2.43
  • SonarQube for IntelliJ plugin version: 12.6.0.84973
  • IntelliJ version: IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2, Build #IU-262.8665.258, built on July 15, 2026
  • Programming language you’re coding in: Java
  • Is connected mode used: Yes
    • SonarQube Cloud, SonarQube Server, or SonarQube Community Build? (if one of the latter two, which version?): SonarQube Server v2026.3.1 (123439)

And a thorough description of the problem / question:

Cannot start the SonarQube for IDE service on account of “java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/intellij/ui/jcef/JBCefApp”.

I have tried the following:

  • Checked that IDEA uses 25.0.3+9-508-16-jcef as the Boot Runtime JDK, and that it includes the relevant JBCefApp-classes.
  • Tried reinstalling the plugin
  • Invalidate Caches and Restart

Se attached plugin logs.

sonarqube-for-ide-bug-report.txt (52.6 KB)

3

Hi @berge-statnett, thanks for the detailed report and logs.

The root cause is that in IntelliJ 2026.2, JCEF was moved out of the core platform into a separate bundled Web Browser (JCEF) plugin, which ships native Chromium binaries. We call JBCefApp.isSupported() at startup (for a telemetry attribute), and if that JCEF plugin isn’t present/enabled the class can’t be found, which aborts the whole service startup with NoClassDefFoundError: com/intellij/ui/jcef/JBCefApp.

We couldn’t reproduce on a stock JetBrains install of the same build, which points to your IDE being a repackaged/system-wide install (yours is under /usr/share/intellij) where JCEF has been stripped out. Could you confirm:

  • Does a jcef folder exist under <install>/plugins/?
  • In Settings → Plugins, is Web Browser (JCEF) listed and enabled?

On our side, we’ll make the plugin resilient to a missing JCEF module so this no longer blocks startup (ticket reference). We’ll keep you posted here.

4

Thank you for your quick response.
I can confirm that I have

  • A folder /usr/share/intellij/plugins/jcef-plugin/jcef
  • Web Browser (JCEF) listed and enabled as a plugin in IDEA
5

Hi @berge-statnett, thanks for checking, that rules out a missing or disabled JCEF install.

Looking at this again following your reply, JCEF is present on your machine, but in IntelliJ 2026.2 its classes are only visible to plugins that declare a dependency on com.intellij.modules.jcef. Our plugin currently does not, so JBCefApp seems to be unreachable from our classloader even though Web Browser (JCEF) is installed and enabled. That matches your original stack trace (the JCEF module isn’t in the parent classloader list).

As mentioned previously, we’ll work on this and we’ll keep you posted here.

10

Here is another plugin with the same issue and their fix.

11

Thanks for sharing @mattnelson!

I have included a fix for the next version 12.7.

14

We have just released the new version 12.7 of SonarQube for IDE which contains this fix. Could you please try and see if you still reproduce the issue? Thank you!