Sonar + maven principle

SonarQube requires quite some configuration to be fully useful!

This article explains the key principles + what is UNIT and INTEGRATION tests from my point of view.

Principle

What are Unit / Integration tests ?

By default "code coverage" only consider the tests from the same projects.

Let's take an example to make things easier...

Consider a project with 4 modules such as:

Then consider the following inter-dependencies:

Definition:

• Unit Tests coverage (UT)

= code coverage for each module only.

== How much tests of 'module A' test 'module A' ??

• Integration Tests coverage (IT)

= overall code coverage.

== Once global compilation and all the tests have been run, how much of 'module A' was used and covered ?

Process overview

To work well SonarQube requires a bit of Maven configuration + Jenkins build adjustment:

• Maven specific properties
• Maven build plug-ins
  • Maven-jacoco (code coverage tool)
  • Maven-surefire (unit tests reports)
  • Maven-failsafe (integration tests reports)

Key points:

• SONAR is configured for JAVA language and it will use Jacoco as coverage tool.
• Each Maven module will have its own Unit Tests results (Surefire reports + .exec file) inside its own target directory
• The Integration Tests results are common. Meaning:
  • all modules will write in the same directory
  • That directory is relative to the maven execution
  • All reports will be aggregated