Are there any new alternatives to get around this issue?
Maybe a new feature? (specifying files to be scanned as a specific language? python file detector could check for a python shebang to identify python files?)
Thanks Pierre-Yves, that works to help specify any file as a python file.
Our implementation now works by running a wrapper to find python files (using the Linux file utility) and passes it to sonar-scanner using the language patterns property.