This tutorial describes how to produce test-coverage metrics for C/C++ projects. We start by instrumenting an autotools build to produce gcov output with gcc; we then generate test coverage artifacts by running our test suite, and finally we explore our results using lcov.
Introduction
We’d like to assess the quality of the existing test suite for each Product Strategy project. A measurement of test coverage will tell us what part of the project’s code is “covered” or exercised by its tests. 50% is a start; 80% would be a good goal for a neglected project; one rarely encounters 100% test coverage, but we’d like to get as close as we can. Initially we’ll use these findings to gain an overview of the test-quality of each project; ultimately these metrics will guide the improvement of our codebase, and enable us to monitor our progress using Jenkins and associated open-source tools.
A Three-Part Process in Several Steps
We’ll enable test-coverage of a particular C/C++ project in a three-part process:
- enabling a special build
- running the tests
- studying the output
Our first step will be to enable a special build. Ultimately this just means adding a few flags to our gcc invocation, but it never seems so straightforward with autotools projects Read more
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