How SonarQube Helps You Write and Deliver Clean Code
15 Jun 2023
SonarQube is a self-managed, automatic code review tool that systematically helps you deliver clean code.
Clean code is code that meets a certain defined standard, i.e. code that is reliable, secure, maintainable, readable, and modular, among other key attributes. Writing clean code is essential to maintaining a healthy codebase and avoiding technical debt.
SonarQube integrates into your existing workflow and detects issues in your code to help you perform continuous code inspections of your projects. The tool analyses 30+ different programming languages and integrates into your CI pipeline and DevOps platform to ensure that your code meets high-quality standards.
Clean as You Code
SonarQube uses a unique approach called "Clean as You Code", which focuses on fixing issues in new code (code that has been added or changed) before they become part of the legacy code. This way, you can maintain high standards and improve your existing code over time.
Quality Gates
One of the features that SonarQube offers is quality gates. Quality gates are the set of conditions that a project must meet before it can be pushed to further environments or released to production. For example, a quality gate might require:
- No new blocker issues
- Code coverage on new code greater than 80%
- Reliability rating on new code better than C
Quality gates enforce a quality policy in your organization by answering one question: is my project ready for release? You can define as many quality gates as you need and assign them to different projects according to your requirements. You can also use the built-in Sonar way quality gate, which is provided by SonarSource and focuses on keeping new code clean.
You can also get notified when a quality gate fails by subscribing to the New quality gate status notification. If a project fails a quality gate, SonarQube provides feedback and guidance on how to fix the issues and improve the code quality.
Quality gates are a powerful tool to help you deliver clean code consistently and reliably. They help you prevent bugs, vulnerabilities, code smells, and technical debt from accumulating in your codebase and affecting your software performance and security. By using quality gates with SonarQube, you can ensure that your code meets your standards and expectations before it reaches your customers.
If you want to learn more about how Tekcent can deploy SonarQube in your organization and help you write clean code, please get in touch with us. We have the expertise and experience to help you achieve your code quality and security goals.