Your team just adopted SonarQube and the initial scan shows 5,000 issues. Management wants to gate deployments on code quality, but developers are overwhelmed. How do you configure Quality Gates to balance quality enforcement with developer productivity?

# Configure Quality Gate via API
# Create a custom Quality Gate
curl -u admin:$TOKEN -X POST \
  "https://sonar.company.com/api/qualitygates/create?name=Team-Standard"

# Add conditions for NEW code only
# New bugs = 0
curl -u admin:$TOKEN -X POST \
  "https://sonar.company.com/api/qualitygates/create_condition" \
  -d "gateName=Team-Standard&metric=new_bugs&op=GT&error=0"

# New vulnerabilities = 0
curl -u admin:$TOKEN -X POST \
  "https://sonar.company.com/api/qualitygates/create_condition" \
  -d "gateName=Team-Standard&metric=new_vulnerabilities&op=GT&error=0"

# New coverage >= 80%
curl -u admin:$TOKEN -X POST \
  "https://sonar.company.com/api/qualitygates/create_condition" \
  -d "gateName=Team-Standard&metric=new_coverage&op=LT&error=80"

# New duplicated lines <= 3%
curl -u admin:$TOKEN -X POST \
  "https://sonar.company.com/api/qualitygates/create_condition" \
  -d "gateName=Team-Standard&metric=new_duplicated_lines_density&op=GT&error=3"

# New code smells maintainability rating = A
curl -u admin:$TOKEN -X POST \
  "https://sonar.company.com/api/qualitygates/create_condition" \
  -d "gateName=Team-Standard&metric=new_maintainability_rating&op=GT&error=1"

# Set as default for all projects
curl -u admin:$TOKEN -X POST \
  "https://sonar.company.com/api/qualitygates/set_as_default?name=Team-Standard"

# Configure New Code period (project setting)
curl -u admin:$TOKEN -X POST \
  "https://sonar.company.com/api/new_code_periods/set" \
  -d "type=PREVIOUS_VERSION&project=my-service"

# Alternative: reference branch for PR analysis
# sonar.newCode.referenceBranch=main

# GitHub Actions integration with Quality Gate check
# .github/workflows/sonar.yml
name: SonarQube
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
  sonarqube:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0  # Full history needed for blame
      - uses: sonarsource/sonarqube-scan-action@v2
        env:
          SONAR_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SONAR_TOKEN }}
          SONAR_HOST_URL: ${{ secrets.SONAR_HOST_URL }}
      - uses: sonarsource/sonarqube-quality-gate-action@v1
        timeout-minutes: 5
        env:
          SONAR_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SONAR_TOKEN }}

# sonar-project.properties
sonar.projectKey=order-service
sonar.sources=src/main
sonar.tests=src/test
sonar.exclusions=**/generated/**,**/vendor/**
sonar.coverage.exclusions=**/config/**,**/dto/**