Transforming the Developer Experience: How Evri Enforced High Code Quality Standards With Qodana

Tool selection: Migrating from SonarQube to Qodana

Evri previously used SonarQube for quality analysis but started looking for alternatives. They questioned its cost efficiency and were concerned about too many legacy issues in its setup. As Luke Morton, Senior Technical Architect at Evri, mentioned, "... people could create their own analysis rules to make their code pass through quality gates. We had limited quality control over our coding standards."

They decided to migrate to Qodana for several reasons:

• Enhanced control. Centralized management of quality rules via a globally configured YAML file at runtime through Jenkins. This way, if developers wanted to make changes, they would need to raise merge requests for the YAML file to the DevEx team.
• Improved project overview. A clear, unified project status with Qodana’s sunburst diagram.
• Immediate feedback. Integrated feedback on merge requests in Jenkins for improved code quality management.

“Getting the feedback directly in front of the developers as part of a comment on a merge request is a key thing for getting them prioritized for action.”

— Luke Morton, Senior Technical Architect at Evri

• IntelliJ IDEA integration. Direct access to reports and files in IntelliJ IDEA, as well as the ability to open issues found by Qodana right in the IDE.
• A fresh start. The opportunity to redefine standards and implement a more modern solution.

“Something fresh was the right move. And allowed us to set expectations from the off essentially.”

— James Hattersley-Dykes, Principal Engineer at Evri

Results: 6x faster code analysis leads to more frequent, faster releases

The key advantage of Qodana for Evri has been that once it was set up in their pipeline, they could rely on it without the need for constant oversight.

In Evri’s pipeline, the process starts with compiling code and running unit and integration tests. Following this, various quality gates, including Qodana and Snyk, run in parallel. Each tool provides feedback on the merge request. If any quality gate fails, the build is halted, preventing the merge request from being integrated into the main branch. However, the code can still be deployed to a feature environment for additional testing.

Shortened time to release and 6x faster code analysis

Qodana has contributed significantly to shortening the time to release at Evri. The tool's integration into their pipelines has enabled more frequent and rapid releases. Specifically, Qodana provides "rapid feedback" within MRs, allowing developers to quickly address issues, thereby speeding up the release process.

“Qodana has drastically shortened release times at Evri by providing rapid feedback on MRs, enabling faster issue resolution. Its quick analysis times, as short as three to five minutes, have replaced the cumbersome 20-minute durations.“

— Luke Morton, Senior Technical Architect at Evri

High code quality at low maintenance

Qodana operates with minimal noise and requires less ongoing management, making it easier to use.

“We don't use Qodana day to day in DevEx; we just administer it. The fact that we don’t need to think about it means it’s working well. I haven’t thought about Qodana in weeks, which just shows it’s doing its job.”

— Louis Jones, Lead Developer Experience Engineer at Evri

Educational opportunity

Qodana serves as an additional learning source for developers.

“Qodana provided a micro-learning opportunity for our developers because if Qodana put a comment on a merge request, they could click it, see the issue, and understand how to resolve it.”

— Luke Morton, Senior Technical Architect at Evri