What a shame that checkstyle does not manage the standard way used by PMD. This is a recurrent need wanted for sonar (see SONAR-208). We keep it actively in mind for next releases.

Simon, can't we imagine to define a boolean option on Sonar Chectyle Plugin to handle this feature ?

To my mind, if it's not complicated to implement, it should be added as quick as possible.
In my case, it prevents me to use the checktyle file generated by sonar in eclipse or maven plugin. The consequence is that when I change something in my checkstyle rules, I have to do it twice : in sonar, and in my external checkstyle file (used by eclipse and maven plugin).

In Sonar 1.9, we'll handle only the default behavior by adding the following line in the checkstyle configuration file

<module name="SuppressionCommentFilter"/>

So rules violations between a comment containing CHECKSTYLE:OFF and a comment containing CHECKSTYLE:ON will be ignore :

//CHECKSTYLE:OFF
      int toto = tata;
      toto.myCheckstyleError();    
//CHECKSTYLE:ON

that's ok for me