Qodana Scan

Qodana is a code quality monitoring tool that identifies and suggests fixes for bugs, security vulnerabilities, duplications, and imperfections.

Table of Contents

• Qodana Scan
  • Usage
  • Configuration
• Issue Tracker

Usage

The Qodana Scan GitHub action allows you to run Qodana on a GitHub repository.

Basic configuration

To configure Qodana Scan, save the .github/workflows/code_quality.yml file containing the workflow configuration:

name: Qodana
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  pull_request:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
      - 'releases/*'

jobs:
  qodana:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
      pull-requests: write
      checks: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          ref: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }}  # to check out the actual pull request commit, not the merge commit
          fetch-depth: 0  # a full history is required for pull request analysis
      - name: 'Qodana Scan'
        uses: JetBrains/qodana-action@v2025.2
        env:
          QODANA_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.QODANA_TOKEN }} # read the steps about it below

To set QODANA_TOKEN environment variable in the build configuration:

1. In the GitHub UI, create the QODANA_TOKEN encrypted secret and save the project token as its value.
2. In the GitHub workflow file, add QODANA_TOKEN variable to the env section of the Qodana Scan step:

Using this workflow, Qodana will run on the main branch, release branches, and on the pull requests coming to your repository.

Note: fetch-depth: 0 is required for checkout in case Qodana works in pull request mode (reports issues that appeared only in that pull request).

We recommend that you have a separate workflow file for Qodana because different jobs run in parallel

Apply quick-fixes

To make Qodana automatically fix found issues and push the changes to your repository, you need to

1. Choose what kind of fixes to apply
   • Specify fixesStrategy in the qodana.yaml file in your repository root
   • Or set the action args property with the quick-fix strategy to use: --apply-fixes or --cleanup
2. Set push-fixes property to
   • pull-request: create a new branch with fixes and create a pull request to the original branch
   • or branch: push fixes to the original branch. Also, set pr-mode to false: currently, this mode is not supported for applying fixes.
3. Set the correct permissions for the job (contents: write, pull-requests: write, checks: write)
   • If you use pull-request value for push-fixes property: allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests

Example configuration:

- name: Qodana Scan
  uses: JetBrains/qodana-action@v2025.2
  with:
    pr-mode: false
    args: --apply-fixes
    push-fixes: pull-request
  env:
    GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Note Qodana could automatically modify not only the code, but also the configuration in .idea: if you do not wish to push these changes, add .idea to your .gitignore file.

If you want to do different git operations in the same job, you can disable push-fixes and do the wanted operations manually

💡Full script example

name: Qodana
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  pull_request:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
      - 'releases/*'

jobs:
  qodana:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
      pull-requests: write
      checks: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          ref: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }}
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: 'Qodana Scan'
        uses: JetBrains/qodana-action@v2025.2
        with:
          args: --cleanup
      - run: |
          git config user.name github-actions
          git config user.email github-actions@github.com
          git checkout -b quick-fixes-$GITHUB_RUN_ID
          git add -- . ':!.idea'
          git commit -m "I fixed some issues"
          git push origin quick-fixes-$GITHUB_RUN_ID
          gh pr create --repo $GITHUB_REPOSITORY --base $GITHUB_REF_NAME --head quick-fixes-$GITHUB_RUN_ID --title "Pull requests" --body "I fixed some issues"
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}

GitHub code scanning

You can set up GitHub code scanning for your project using Qodana. To do it, add these lines to the code_quality.yml workflow file right below the basic configuration of Qodana Scan:

      - uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v2
        with:
          sarif_file: ${{ runner.temp }}/qodana/results/qodana.sarif.json

This sample invokes codeql-action for uploading a SARIF-formatted Qodana report to GitHub, and specifies the report file using the sarif_file key.

GitHub code scanning does not export inspection results to third-party tools, which means that you cannot use this data for further processing by Qodana. In this case, you have to set up baseline and quality gate processing on the Qodana side prior to submitting inspection results to GitHub code scanning, see the Quality gate and baseline section for details.

Pull request quality gate

You can enforce GitHub to block the merge of pull requests if the Qodana quality gate has failed. To do it, create a branch protection rule as described below:

1. Create a new or open an existing GitHub workflow that invokes the Qodana Scan action.
2. Set the workflow to run on pull_request events that target the main branch.

on:
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - main

Instead of main, you can specify your branch here.

3. Set the number of problems (integer) for the Qodana action fail-threshold option.
4. Under your repository name, click Settings.
5. On the left menu, click Branches.
6. In the branch protection rules section, click Add rule.
7. Add main to Branch name pattern.
8. Select Require status checks to pass before merging.
9. Search for the Qodana status check, then check it.
10. Click Create.

Quality gate and baseline

You can combine the quality gate and baseline features to manage your technical debt, report only new problems, and block pull requests that contain too many problems.

Follow these steps to establish a baseline for your project:

1. Run Qodana locally over your project:

cd project
qodana scan --show-report

2. Open your report at http://localhost:8080/, add detected problems to the baseline, and download the qodana.sarif.json file.

3. Upload the qodana.sarif.json file to your project root folder on GitHub.

4. Append --baseline,qodana.sarif.json argument to the Qodana Scan action configuration args parameter in the code_quality.yml file:

- name: Qodana Scan
  uses: JetBrains/qodana-action@main
  with:
    args: --baseline,qodana.sarif.json

If you want to update the baseline, you need to repeat these steps once again.

Starting from this, GitHub will generate alters only for the problems that were not added to the baseline as new.

To establish a quality gate additionally to the baseline, add this line to code_quality.yml right after the baseline-path line:

fail-threshold: <number-of-accepted-problems>

Based on this, you will be able to detect only new problems in pull requests that fall beyond the baseline. At the same time, pull requests with new problems exceeding the fail-threshold limit will be blocked, and the workflow will fail.

Get a Qodana badge

You can set up a Qodana workflow badge in your repository, to do it, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the workflow run that you previously configured.
2. On the workflow page, select Create status badge.
3. Copy the Markdown text to your repository README file.

Configuration

Most likely, you won't need other options than args: all other options can be helpful if you are configuring multiple Qodana Scan jobs in one workflow.

Use with to define any action parameters:

with:
  args: --baseline,qodana.sarif.json
  cache-default-branch-only: true

Name	Description	Default Value
args	Additional Qodana CLI scan command arguments, split the arguments with commas (,), for example -i,frontend,--print-problems. Optional.	-
results-dir	Directory to store the analysis results. Optional.	${{ runner.temp }}/qodana/results
upload-result	Upload Qodana results (SARIF, other artifacts, logs) as an artifact to the job. Optional.	false
artifact-name	Specify Qodana results artifact name, used for results uploading. Optional.	qodana-report
cache-dir	Directory to store Qodana cache. Optional.	${{ runner.temp }}/qodana/caches
use-caches	Utilize GitHub caches for Qodana runs. Optional.	true
primary-cache-key	Set the primary cache key. Optional.	qodana-2025.2-${{ github.ref }}-${{ github.sha }}
additional-cache-key	Set the additional cache key. Optional.	qodana-2025.2-${{ github.ref }}
cache-default-branch-only	Upload cache for the default branch only. Optional.	false
use-annotations	Use annotation to mark the results in the GitHub user interface. Optional.	true
pr-mode	Analyze ONLY changed files in a pull request. Optional.	true
post-pr-comment	Post a comment with the Qodana results summary to the pull request. Optional.	true
github-token	GitHub token to access the repository: post annotations, comments. Optional.	${{ github.token }}
push-fixes	Push Qodana fixes to the repository, can be none, branch to the current branch, or pull-request. Optional.	none

Issue Tracker

All the issues, feature requests, and support related to Qodana are handled on YouTrack.

If you'd like to file a new issue, please use the link YouTrack | New Issue.