When you first start using code scanning, you'll likely use default setup. This guide describes how to evaluate how default setup for code scanning is working for you, and what steps to take if something isn't working as you expect. This guide also describes how you can customize code scanning if you find that you have a specific use case that your new configuration doesn't fit.
Customizing code scanning
When you first configure default setup, or after an initial analysis of your code, you can edit which languages default setup will analyze and the query suite run during analysis. The default query suite contains a set of queries that are carefully designed to look for the most relevant security issues, while minimizing false positive results. However, you can use the security-extended suite to run additional queries, which have slightly lower precision. For more information on the available query suites, see CodeQL query suites.
For more information about customizing default setup, see Editing your configuration of default setup.
Using advanced setup
If you've found that you still need more granular control over code scanning, you can use advanced setup. Advanced setup requires significantly more effort to configure, customize, and maintain, so we recommend enabling default setup first. For more information about advanced setup, see Configuring advanced setup for code scanning and Customizing your advanced setup for code scanning.
Evaluating code scanning with the tool status page
The tool status page shows useful information about all of your code scanning tools. You can use it to investigate whether individual tools are working for a repository, when files in the repository were first scanned and most recently scanned, and when upcoming scans are scheduled. It's also a useful starting point for debugging issues.
Using the tool status page, you can download the list of rules that code scanning is checking against, in CSV format. For integrated tools like CodeQL, you can also see more detailed information, including a percentage of files scanned and specific error messages.
If you find that default setup doesn't scan all your files, you may need to customize code scanning. For more information, see Customizing code scanning in this article. Alternatively, or if something else isn't working as you expect, you may find our dedicated troubleshooting documentation useful. For more information, see Troubleshooting code scanning.
For more detailed information about the tool status page, see About the tool status page for code scanning.