Sonar is a very good tool to get an overview over the codebase. Its strenght is that you can see a lot of data(and select which data you want) in a single chart.
The most useful chart in that sense is the "Filter Motion Chart". It aggregates data over projects & time giving the broadest overview possible.
I tried and searched a lot and was not able to find a proper replacement in sonar 6.x.
- Have I overlooked a solution?
- Is something planned for a replacement?
- Will the "Filter Motion Chart" be fixed for sonar 6.x?
We decided in our company not to upgrade sonar until this problem is fixed. We think that the usefulness of sonar is crippled without this.
Edit: Added details as a response to Fabrice solution: (does not fit into comment)
I will give you some details so you better understand our needs:
We are a team that works together on multible projects. No one has ownership of a single project but the responsibility is shared in the whole team.
In our daily work we use sonar to monitor the quality of the code we are working on (writing or reviewing).
But as we collaborate on the same codebase and have shared responsibilty, we have to agree on certain standards with the whole team (Coding conventions, typical design patterns, sonar rules and much more...).
These things need to be discussed with the whole team. One start point for such discussions is that we look at. What we do is:
- Mark the projects that had changes since we last looked at sonar as favorites(typically 2 weeks ago)
- Open the filter motion chart to get an overview over the changes since we last met
- Drill into the details
- If needed Discuss problems, rules, etc.
I agree that in my daily work I do not need the broad overview. But as we are a team that is working together we need this "team view" as well.
"SonarQube is not meant to be a multi-purpose aggregation platform (...)"
It is a pity that you think that way. As a matter of fact: Sonar does a very good job in aggregating data. Timeline, Bubble, etc. are very useful tools for aggregating data. Throwing this away will diminish the usefulness of sonar. I hope you think about this a second time.
"(...)embrace quality as a day-to-day practice(...)"
I understand that this is a big part of sonar. The reason that we do not rate this part as important may be related to the fact that we develop c# with Visual Studio. With build in features & 3rd party plugins Visual Studio is quite ok in giving direct feedback on code quality. This may be different for other languages & toolsets giving this part of sonar a bigger importace.
"(...)and we feel this is not a good thing (performance wise, UX wise, product wise, ...) (...)"
I could accept that at an answer: You do not want to do it, because it is difficult!
I think that sonar is a very useful tool. You did a very good job developing it. And you developed not only rules & quality gates but Timelines, Bubble Charts,...
You cannot blame your users for using them!
As a user I can tell you: You have users that use these tools! For good reason! I hope you rethink your "data aggregation is bad"-concept!
