SonarQube fails to start due to findbugs and fbcontrib

Question

I'm upgrading from Sonar 3.1.1 to SonarQube 4.0. I have the sonar-fb-contrib-plugin-1.2.jar file in my extensions/plugins directory. The startup fails with the following message:

2013.11.12 15:10:17 INFO  org.sonar.INFO  Install plugins done: 197 ms
2013.11.12 15:10:17 ERROR o.s.s.p.PlatformLifecycleListener  Fail to start server
org.sonar.api.utils.SonarException: Fail to extend the plugin findbugs for fbcontrib

My understanding is that findbugs comes bundled with SonarQube (I can see the jar file under bundled-plugins). I'm not sure what the problem is here - it doesn't look like this works out of the box as it did for 3.1.1

Answer 1

I had a similar issue while upgrading from 3.6 to 3.7.3; the fbcontrib-plugin depends on the findbugs-plugin which is part of the sonar java-ecosystem.

In this case it is safe (and documented, point 6) to take a backup of the database and of the extensions directory before updating; then update and restart sonar having moved away any external contribution plugin, so that sonar can manage the update and come up back successfully. Another good tip is to not overwrite new configuration files with the old ones, instead manually editing them to bring over the old settings.

Then, add the plugins back and restart again; happy static analysis.