The Coverity plugin is attempting to read Coverity version information from the [Coverity Home]\VERSION file. In CheckConfig.java's getCoverityVersion method, it is looking for a line in VERSION that begins with "externalVersion=".

At least as of Coverity Static Analysis 6.5.1, the VERSION file does not contain any line that begins with "externalVersion=". Therefore getCoverityVersion returns null, which eventually results in the following crash when a job containing a Coverity post-build action is instantiated:

Started by user anonymous

Checking Coverity configuration...
FATAL: null
java.lang.NullPointerException
at jenkins.plugins.coverity.CoverityVersion.compareTo(CoverityVersion.java:112)
at jenkins.plugins.coverity.CheckConfig.check(CheckConfig.java:108)
at jenkins.plugins.coverity.CoverityRunListener.setUpEnvironment(CoverityRunListener.java:52)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.createLauncher(AbstractBuild.java:617)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.run(AbstractBuild.java:542)
at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1670)
at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:46)
at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:88)
at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:231)