SonarQube issue - Could not find branches

SonarQube allows branch level (for example, if you are using Git, you may want to scan your feature branch and fix identified issues before creating a Pull/Merge Request to the develop branch) analysis. In order to do branch level analysis, you need to specify your branch using SonarQube parameter 'sonar.branch.name' and optionally 'sonar.branch.target' (the name of the branch into which the temporary branch specified with 'sonar.branch.name' will be merged.
However, if SonarQube project does not exist for the given source code repository yet and you are scanning your source code repository for the first time and you specified your branch name using 'sonar.branch.name', you'll get the following error:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.sonarsource.scanner.maven:sonar-maven-plugin:3.6.0.1398:sonar (default-cli) on project web-mywebapps: Could not find branches. A regular analysis is required before creating branches. -> [Help 1] [ERROR] [ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch. [ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging. [ERROR] [ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:

As you can see from the error message, it says "...could not find branches. A regular analysis is required...". So, for the first scan whatever branch you are scanning, do not use parameter 'sonar.branch.name' One way to tackle this issue is to write some conditional logic in your SonarQube job. Below is a kind of a pseudo code example. Here the -Dsonar.branch.name property and value is passed to Maven goal only if the variable 'FIRST_TIME_BUILD' is false.
Note: 'FIRST_TIME_BUILD' is not a SonarQube built in variable, I've used it as an example to specify the condition.

<goals>clean install sonar:sonar -Dsonar.host.url=\$SONAR_HOST_URL <% if(!FIRST_BASELINE_BUILD) {%> -Dsonar.branch.name=<%= sonarBranchName%> <%}%> -Dorg.xml.sax.driver=com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.SAXParser -U</goals>

Hope it helps. For details on SonarQube branch analysis, visit https://docs.sonarqube.org/latest/branches/overview/

Jenkins Pipeline - Few Troubleshooting Tips

1)  ERROR: Error cloning remote repo ... fatal: I don't handle protocol 'ssh'. Detail stack trace below:

ERROR: Error cloning remote repo 'origin' hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Command "git fetch --tags --progress ssh://<gituser>@<githost>:<port>/<GIT_REPO_NAME>.git +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" returned status code 128: stdout: stderr: fatal: I don't handle protocol ' ssh' at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.launchCommandIn(CliGitAPIImpl.java:1996) at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.launchCommandWithCredentials(CliGitAPIImpl.java:1715) at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.access$300(CliGitAPIImpl.java:72)

Root cause and possible solution: The above issue can be caused by many things, but one you never suspect from the error message itself is that it is caused by some extra character(s) in GIT URL that you can't see on the Jenkins UI. Specifically if you have copied your GIT URL from another web page. Just delete the GIT URL in your pipeline script and retype it manually (instead of copying), it may solve the issue.

2) Error: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: No such DSL method 'findFiles' found among steps...

Root cause and possible solution: The DSL methods are related to the Jenkins DSL execution engine or one of the Plugins. In this particular case, make sure pipeline-utility-steps (pipeline-utility-steps.jpi) plugin is installed. For more info visit https://plugins.jenkins.io/pipeline-utility-steps

3) Error: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: No such DSL method 'httpRequest' found among steps...

Root cause and possible solution: In this particular case, make sure httpRequest (http_request.hpi) plugin is installed. For more info visit https://jenkins.io/doc/pipeline/steps/http_request/

4) Error: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: No such DSL method 'sshagent' found among steps...

Root cause and possible solution: In this particular case, make sure sshAgent (ssh-agent.hpi ) plugin (http_request.hpi) plugin is installed. For more info visit https://wiki.jenkins.io/display/JENKINS/SSH+Agent+Plugin

5) Error: java.lang.RuntimeException: [ssh-agent] Could not find a suitable ssh-agent provider...

java.lang.RuntimeException: [ssh-agent] Could not find a suitable ssh-agent provider. at com.cloudbees.jenkins.plugins.sshagent.SSHAgentStepExecution.initRemoteAgent(SSHAgentStepExecution.java:175) at com.cloudbees.jenkins.plugins.sshagent.SSHAgentStepExecution.start(SSHAgentStepExecution.java:63) at org.jenkinsci.plugins.workflow.cps.DSL.invokeStep(DSL.java:270) at org.jenkinsci.plugins.workflow.cps.DSL.invokeMethod(DSL.java:178) at org.jenkinsci.plugins.workflow.cps.CpsScript.invokeMethod(CpsScript.java:122) at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor171.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)

Root cause and possible solution: This error means that the sshAgent plugin is not able to locate the sshAgent provider in the path. Mostly, you may encounter this issue if you are running Jenkins on Windows. In order to resolve this issue on Windows, I downloaded the Portable GIT (https://git-scm.com/download/win) and put %PORTABLE_GIT_HOME%\usr\bin directory in my System path. This directory has ssh-agent.exe file. Make sure to launch new command window and restart the Jenkins.
You may be interested reading the following Jenkins related blog:
Jenkins Job Chain and How to Resolve Issue with Parameter Passing
How to Retrieve Info Using Jenkins Remote Access API

6) You are using Maven Pipeline Plugin and you get  [ERROR] Java heap space

[ERROR] Java heap space -> [Help 1] [ERROR] [ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch. [ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging. [ERROR] [ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles: [ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/OutOfMemoryError

Root cause and possible solution: Because of insufficient Java heap space, it is running out of memory. The easiest solution is to use Maven JVM Options to specify the maximum (or min & max both) heap size that your process needs. You can use 'mavenOpts' within 'withMaven' step. Below is an example:

stage('Build') { withMaven(   mavenSettingsConfig: '9d2a7048-91b1-47a8-8788-be4b89b71128', jdk: jdk.toString(), maven: 'Maven 3.3.9', mavenOpts: '-Xmx2048m') {     bat 'mvn clean package'       } }

Important: before increasing the heap size, make sure you have sufficient physical memory (RAM) available. If your Java process can not reserve specified heap space, then you may get error saying "Error occurred during initialization of VM. Could not reserve enough space for 2097152KB object heap". Which means either there is not enough physical memory available in the server for Java to reserve specified heap space (2 GB in this case) or other server/OS settings (like 32 JVM on Windows has around 1.6 GB heap limitation) preventing Java to reserve specified heap size.