Hello SonarQube 
Community,
Version after version, SonarQube offers new features and improvements for 27 languages. From now on, the future additions to languages will be available only in new releases of SonarQube. In practice, previous SonarQube versions, including the 7.9 LTS, will stop offering the ability to upgrade language analysis to benefit from features added in the future versions of the product.
Why? We thought hard about this and, in the end, it came down to the choice you make: LTS or non-LTS.
For LTS users, you adopt an LTS for stability. Intermediate language upgrades represent anything but stability! They could completely change which issues a rule raises, thus the quality gate status, and so on… They could even introduce new bugs (obviously that’s not our target outcome, but it could happen). So from that standpoint, we realized it really didn’t make sense to support language upgrades in an LTS.
If you’re not on an LTS, then you’ve signed up for the latest/greatest features. In that case, it doesn’t really make sense for you to remain in some half-way state between a not-LTS-but-not-current version of SonarQube with newer language features. And actually, new language features are often matched with new features in SonarQube itself. The two go hand-in-hand, and your experience won’t be optimal unless you’re “caught up” on all fronts at the same time.
For most of you, it should simplify the upgrade to future versions of SonarQube, specifically in a Docker environment, with no need to deal with updated languages anymore.
What about language-related bugs in the LTS? This new approach will bring more stability for LTS users thanks to patches that will exclusively offer fixes for the most severe issues but no other functional additions.
Making this change will also free us up from some compatibility constraints that have tied our hands in the past and limited our ability to deliver the best new features in a timely manner. So now we’ll be freer to innovate, and you can expect even more exciting features to come…
Finally, the choice is always yours and is more clear than ever: You can choose to get a very stable version of the product by using the LTS or install and use a recent version to benefit from the latest features… Either way, with these changes we’re confident in our ability to deliver the best possible experience to you and your organization.
Chris