Running TSLint within SonarQube on a TFS build

calendarJul 5, 2016 · 2 min read · Uncategorised  ·
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I wanted to add some level of static analysis to our Typescript projects, TSLint being the obvious choice. To make sure it got run as part of our build release process I wanted to wire it into our SonarQube system, this meant using the community TSLintPlugin, which is still pre-release (0.6 preview at the time of writing).

I followed the installation process for plugin without any problems setting the TSLint path to match our build boxes

C:UsersTfsbuildAppDataRoamingnpmnode_modulestslintbintslint

Within my TFS/VSTS build I added three extra tasks

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  • An NPM install to make sure that TSLint was installed in the right folder by running the command ‘install -g tslint typescript ‘
  • A pre-build SonarQube MSBuild task to link to our SonarQube instance
  • A post-build SonarQube MSBuild task to complete the analysis

Once this build was run with a simple Hello World TypeScript project, I could see SonarQube attempting to do TSLint analysis but failing with the error

2016-07-05T11:36:02.6425918Z INFO: Sensor com.pablissimo.sonar.TsLintSensor

2016-07-05T11:36:07.1425492Z ##[error]ERROR: TsLint Err: Invalid option for configuration: tslint.json

2016-07-05T11:36:07.3612994Z INFO: Sensor com.pablissimo.sonar.TsLintSensor (done) | time=4765ms

The problem was the build task generated sonar-project.properties file did not contain the path to the TSLint.json file. In the current version of the TSLint plugin this file needs to be managed manually, it is not generated by the SonarQube ruleset. Hence is a file in the source code folder on the build box, a path that the SonarQube server cannot know.

The Begin Analysis SonarQube for MSBuild task generates the sonar-project.properties, but only adds the entries for MSBuild (as its name suggests). It does nothing related to TsLint plugin or any other plugins.

The solution was to add the required setting via the advanced properties of the Begin Analysis task i.e. point to the tslint.json file under source control, using a build variable to set the base folder.

/d:sonar.ts.tslintconfigpath=$(build.sourcesdirectory)tslint.json

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Once this setting was added I could see the TSLint rules being evaluated and the showing up in the SonarQube analysis.

Another step to improving our overall code quality through consistent analysis of technical debt.