Getting started with the CodeQL CLI

Getting started with the CodeQL CLI

To run CodeQL commands, you need to set up the CLI so that it can access the tools, queries, and libraries required to create and analyze databases.

Setting up the CodeQL CLI

The CodeQL CLI can be set up to support many different use cases and directory structures. To get started quickly, we recommend adopting a relatively simple setup, as outlined in the steps below.

If you use Linux, Windows, or macOS version 10.14 ("Mojave") or earlier, simply follow the steps below. For macOS version 10.15 ("Catalina") or newer, there are additional notes for some of the steps. If you are using macOS on Apple Silicon (for example, Apple M1), ensure that the Xcode command-line developer tools and Rosetta 2 are installed.

For information about installing the CodeQL CLI in a CI system to create results to display in GitHub as code scanning alerts, see Installing CodeQL CLI in your CI system.

1. Download the CodeQL CLI zip package

The CodeQL CLI download package is a zip archive containing tools, scripts, and various CodeQL-specific files. If you don’t have a GitHub Enterprise license then, by downloading this archive, you are agreeing to the GitHub CodeQL Terms and Conditions.

If you use Linux, Windows, or macOS version 10.14 ("Mojave") or earlier, simply download the zip archive for the version you require.

If you want the CLI for a specific platform, download the appropriate codeql-PLATFORM.zip file. Alternatively, you can download codeql.zip, which contains the CLI for all supported platforms.

Download information for macOS "Catalina" (or newer) users

If you use macOS version 10.15 ("Catalina"), version 11 ("Big Sur"), or the upcoming version 12 ("Monterey"), you need to ensure that your web browser does not automatically extract zip files. If you use Safari, complete the following steps before downloading the CodeQL CLI zip archive:

1. Open Safari.
2. From the Safari menu, select Preferences….
3. Click the General Tab.
4. Ensure the check-box labeled Open "safe" files after downloading is unchecked.

2. Extract the zip archive

For Linux, Windows, and macOS users (version 10.14 "Mojave", and earlier) simply extract the zip archive.

Extraction information for macOS "Catalina" (or newer) users

macOS "Catalina", "Big Sur", or "Monterey" users should run the following commands in the Terminal, where ${extraction-root} is the path to the directory where you will extract the CodeQL CLI zip archive:

1. mv ~/Downloads/codeql\*.zip ${extraction-root}
2. cd ${extraction-root}
3. /usr/bin/xattr -c codeql\*.zip
4. unzip codeql\*.zip

3. Launch codeql

Once extracted, you can run CodeQL processes by running the codeql executable in a couple of ways:

• By executing <extraction-root>/codeql/codeql, where <extraction-root> is the folder where you extracted the CodeQL CLI package.
• By adding <extraction-root>/codeql to your PATH, so that you can run the executable as just codeql.

At this point, you can execute CodeQL commands. For a full list of the CodeQL CLI commands, see "CodeQL CLI commands manual."

4. Verify your CodeQL CLI setup

CodeQL CLI has subcommands you can execute to verify that you are correctly set up to create and analyze databases:

• Run codeql resolve languages to show which languages are available for database creation. This will list the languages supported by default in your CodeQL CLI package.

Alternatively, you can download query packs during the analysis by using the --download flag of the codeql database analyze command.

Checking out the CodeQL source code directly

Some users prefer working with CodeQL query sources directly in order to work on or contribute to the Open Source shared queries. In order to do this, the following steps are recommended. Note that the following instructions are a slightly more complicated alternative to working with CodeQL packages as explained above.

1. Download the CodeQL CLI zip

Follow step 1 from the previous section.

2. Create a new CodeQL directory

Create a new directory where you can place the CLI and any queries and libraries you want to use. For example, $HOME/codeql-home.

The CLI’s built-in search operations automatically look in all of its sibling directories for the files used in database creation and analysis. Keeping these components in their own directory prevents the CLI searching unrelated sibling directories while ensuring all files are available without specifying any further options on the command line.

3. Obtain a local copy of the CodeQL queries

The CodeQL repository contains the queries and libraries required for CodeQL analysis of all supported languages. Clone a copy of this repository into codeql-home.

By default, the root of the cloned repository will be called codeql. Rename this folder codeql-repo to avoid conflicting with the CodeQL CLI that you will extract in step 4. If you use git on the command line, you can clone and rename the repository in a single step by running git clone git@github.com:github/codeql.git codeql-repo in the codeql-home folder.

4. Extract the zip archive

For Linux, Windows, and macOS users (version 10.14 "Mojave", and earlier) simply extract the zip archive into the directory you created in step 2.

For example, if the path to your copy of the CodeQL repository is $HOME/codeql-home/codeql-repo, then extract the CLI into $HOME/codeql-home/.

5. Launch codeql

See step 3 from the previous section.

6. Verify your CodeQL CLI setup

CodeQL CLI has subcommands you can execute to verify that you are correctly set up to create and analyze databases:

• Run codeql resolve languages to show which languages are available for database creation. This will list the languages supported by default in your CodeQL CLI package.
• Run codeql resolve qlpacks to show which CodeQL packs the CLI can find. This will display the names of all the CodeQL packs directly available to the CodeQL CLI. This should include:
• Query packs for each supported language, for example, codeql/{language}-queries. These packs contain the standard queries that will be run for each analysis.
• Library packs for each supported language, for example, codeql/{language}-all. These packs contain query libraries, such as control flow and data flow libraries, that may be useful to query writers.
• Example packs for each supported language, for example, codeql/{language}-examples. These packs contain useful snippets of CodeQL that query writers may find useful.
• Legacy packs that ensure custom queries and libraries created using older products are compatible with your version of CodeQL.

Using two versions of the CodeQL CLI

If you want to use the latest CodeQL features to execute queries or CodeQL tests, but also want to prepare databases that are compatible with a specific version of CodeQL code scanning on GitHub Enterprise Server, you may need to install two versions of the CLI. The recommended directory setup depends on which versions you want to install:

• If both versions are 2.0.2 (or newer), you can unpack both CLI archives in the same parent directory.
• If at least one of the versions is 2.0.1 (or older), the unpacked CLI archives cannot be in the same parent directory, but they can share the same grandparent directory. For example, if you unpack version 2.0.2 into $HOME/codeql-home/codeql-cli, the older version should be unpacked into $HOME/codeql-older-version/old-codeql-cli. Here, the common grandparent is the $HOME directory.