# Rcov 0.7.0 (code coverage for Ruby)

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [August 4, 2006, 4:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375 "2006-08-04T16:24:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2006, 4:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/1 "2006-08-04T16:24:25Z")

</div>

Source code, additional information, screenshots… available at  
[eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?rcov)  
Release information:  
[eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?rcov+0.7.0)

Sample (fully) cross-referenced report at  
[eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org/static/rcov-sample-report-full-crossref/)

This release includes two RubyGems packages: a binary one for Win32 and  
a  
platform-independent one for all those with a compiler, (or a lot of  
patience,  
if willing to run rcov in pure-Ruby mode), so  
gem install rcov  
should work once the packages have propagated to the mirror network (as  
of  
14:20 UTC, about 5H since I uploaded them to Rubyforge, they haven’t).

# Overview

rcov is a code coverage tool for Ruby. It is commonly used for viewing  
overall  
test coverage of target code. It features:

- fast execution: 20-300 times faster than previous tools
- multiple analysis modes: standard, bogo-profile, “intentional  
testing”,  
dependency analysis…
- detection of uncovered code introduced since the last run  
(“differential  
code coverage”)
- fairly accurate coverage information through code linkage inference  
using  
simple heuristics
- cross-referenced XHTML and several kinds of text reports
- support for easy automation with Rake and Rant
- colorblind-friendliness

# What’s new in 0.7.0

See [eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?rcov+0.7.0) for the detailed change  
summary.

## Features

- coverage/callsite data from multiple runs can be aggregated  
(–aggregate)

## Bugfixes

- the SCRIPT\_LINES\_\_ workaround works better
- fixed silly bug in coverage data acquisition (line after the correct  
one  
marked in some situations)
- avoid problems with repeated path separators in default ignore list,  
based  
on rbconfig’s data

# How do I use it?

In the common scenario, your tests are under test/ and the target code  
(whose coverage you want) is in lib/. In that case, all you have to do  
is  
use rcov to run the tests (instead of testrb), and a number of XHTML  
files  
with the code coverage information will be generated, e.g.

```
rcov -Ilib test/*.rb

```

will execute all the .rb files under test/ and generate the code  
coverage  
report for the target code (i.e. for the files in lib/) under coverage/.  
The  
target code needs not be under lib/; rcov will detect is as long as it  
is  
require()d by the tests. rcov is smart enough to ignore “uninteresting”  
files: the tests themselves, files installed in Ruby’s standard  
locations,  
etc. See rcov --help for the list of regexps rcov matches filenames  
against.

rcov can also be used from Rake; see README.rake or the RDoc  
documentation  
for more information.

rcov can output information in several formats, and perform different  
kinds  
of analyses in addition to plain code coverage. See rcov --help for a  
description of the available options.

# Sample output

See [eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?rcov) (once again) for screenshots.

The text report (also used by default in RcovTasks) resembles

±----------------------------------------------------±------±------±-------+  
| File | Lines | LOC | COV |  
±----------------------------------------------------±------±------±-------+  
|lib/rcov.rb | 572 | 358 | 91.3% |  
±----------------------------------------------------±------±------±-------+  
|Total | 572 | 358 | 91.3% |  
±----------------------------------------------------±------±------±-------+  
91.3% 1 file(s) 572 Lines 358 LOC

The (undecorated) textual output with execution count information looks  
like this:

# $ rcov --no-html --text-counts b.rb

# ./b.rb

```
                                                                   | 

```

2  
a, b, c = (1…3).to\_a |  
2  
10.times do |  
1  
a += 1 |  
10  
20.times do |i| |  
10  
b += i |  
200  
b.times do |  
200  
c += (j = (b-a).abs) \> 0 ? j : 0 |  
738800  
end |  
0  
end |  
0  
end |  
0

rcov can detect when you’ve added code that was not covered by your unit  
tests:

```
$ rcov --text-coverage-diff --no-color test/*.rb
Started
.......................................
Finished in 1.163085 seconds.

39 tests, 415 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

================================================================================
!!!!! Uncovered code introduced in lib/rcov.rb

### lib/rcov.rb:207

 def precompute_coverage(comments_run_by_default = true)
   changed = false
   lastidx = lines.size - 1
   if (!is_code?(lastidx) || /^ __END__ $/ =~ @lines[-1]) && 

```

!@coverage[lastidx]  
!! # mark the last block of comments  
!! @coverage[lastidx] ||= :inferred  
!! (lastidx-1).downto(0) do |i|  
!! break if is\_code?(i)  
!! @coverage[i] ||= :inferred  
!! end  
!! end  
(0…lines.size).each do |i|  
next if @coverage[i]  
line = @lines[i]

# Thanks

Thomas L.:

- reported that the SCRIPT\_LINES\_\_ workaround did not always work

Assaph M.:

- beta-tested 0.7.0 and found a bug in --aggregate (missing files)

Ryan Kinderman:

- suggested that -Ipath be passed to ruby instead of rcov in RcovTasks

## License

rcov is released under the terms of Ruby’s license.  
rcov includes xx 0.1.0, which is subject to the following conditions:

ePark Labs Public License version 1  
Copyright (c) 2005, ePark Labs, Inc. and contributors  
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without  
modification,  
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright  
notice, this  
list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright  
notice,  
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the  
documentation  
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of ePark Labs nor the names of its contributors  
may be  
used to endorse or promote products derived from this software  
without  
specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS  
IS” AND  
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE  
IMPLIED  
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE  
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE  
LIABLE FOR  
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL  
DAMAGES  
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR  
SERVICES;  
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED  
AND ON  
ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT  
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF  
THIS  
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 5:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/2 "2006-08-07T05:17:50Z")

</div>

I am wondering, for a rails project, would this be the correct way to  
use  
this?

rcov -Ilib test/\*\*/\*.rb

That works for me, albeit about 30% of my tests fail then, while when I  
run  
them using the rake task (“rake”), they all pass. So I suppose I must be  
doing something wrong.

Thanks alot, great project,

Rob

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 5:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/3 "2006-08-07T05:29:51Z")

</div>

On Aug 6, 2006, at 11:15 PM, Robert MannI wrote:

> doing something wrong.
> 
> Thanks alot, great project,

[http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/rails\_rcov](http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/rails_rcov)

That plugin takes a lot of the headache out of using rails + rcov.  
(Please don’t top post).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 5:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/4 "2006-08-07T05:44:51Z")

</div>

Mauricio thanks for the excellent tool. I use it every day.

Michael

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 5:56am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/5 "2006-08-07T05:56:52Z")

</div>

On 8/7/06, Robert MannI [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> I am wondering, for a rails project, would this be the correct way to use  
> this?
> 
> rcov -Ilib test/\*\*/\*.rb
> 
> That works for me, albeit about 30% of my tests fail then, while when I run  
> them using the rake task (“rake”), they all pass. So I suppose I must be  
> doing something wrong.

This was actually discovered on a rails project. In Rails case there  
seems to be some weird interaction where running all tests  
(integreation and functional for me) causes clashes. The rake tasks  
for rails also launch a separate test process for each, and now rcov  
mimics that.

Using the coverage.task template provided by Mauricio for rails seems  
to fix the issue.

HTH,  
Assaph

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 6:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/6 "2006-08-07T06:29:53Z")

</div>

Hi,

sorry for being – may be – a little offtopic.

Currently I am playing around with “”""“encryption”"""" – the  
meaning of all those "'s is: “Encryption” in the sense of “convert  
readable text into unreadable text” not in the sense of “Bullet  
proof encryption suitable for secret service agents”.

Just something to play around with…

What I need is the following “device”:

Input is a freely defineable range of anything a byte can stand  
for. Output is again a value of the same range. This mapping from an  
input to an output value should be made variable in two manners:  
First is to change the mapping itsself the second way is to define  
an offset. This should work as follows:

Without offset: With offset 3:

A -\> Z A -\> I // wrapped around from the end  
B -\> H B -\> B // of the previously defined  
C -\> L C -\> Q // range  
D -\> P D -\> Z  
E -\> F E -\> H  
F -\> D F -\> L  
. G -\> P  
. H -\> F  
. I -\> D

The offset should be changeable at each new mapping action.

My first idea was to define an Hash which maps an input range  
to an index. To this index it is easy to add an offset. The  
second step would be an array, which maps the new calculated index  
(old index + offset) to the same range again, but this time  
the range was “sorted” by sort{rand} st initialization time.

But when I do a “a=device.new”, what should I return as an obejct  
to the caller ??? TWO objects – the hash AND the array ?

I am curious whether there are better, more elegant ways to accomplish  
this in a more rubyish way.

I would be happy to read of your ideas how to implement this! 🙂  
Thank you very much in advance for any help and any idea !

Ruby! 🙂  
mcc

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 3:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/7 "2006-08-07T15:51:32Z")

</div>

On Aug 6, 2006, at 11:29 PM, Meino Christian C. wrote:

> My first idea was to define an Hash which maps an input range  
> to an index. To this index it is easy to add an offset. The  
> second step would be an array, which maps the new calculated index  
> (old index + offset) to the same range again, but this time  
> the range was “sorted” by sort{rand} st initialization time.
> 
> But when I do a “a=device.new”, what should I return as an obejct  
> to the caller ??? TWO objects – the hash AND the array ?

The whole point of wrapping something like this is in an object is  
that these are just internal details user code for the object never  
needs to worry about. For example, users are going to call your code  
something like:

dev = Device.new( … )  
after = dev.encryrpt(before)

All they know is that they are working with a Device. They don’t  
need to worry about Hashes and Arrays.

I recommend using a Hash internally in the object. When a problem  
says “mapping” that usually means Hash. You could build the  
interface to handle either a Hash or an Integer being passed to the  
constructor:

class Device  
def initialize(mapping\_or\_offset)  
if mapping\_or\_offset.is\_a? Hash  
@mapping = build\_mapping\_from\_hash(mapping\_or\_offset)  
else # offset  
@mapping = build\_mapping\_from\_integer(mapping\_or\_offset)  
end  
end

```
 def encrypt(bytes)
   # use @mapping here...
 end

 private

 def build_mapping_from_hash(hash)
   # ...
 end

 def build_mapping_from_integer(integer)
   # ...
 end

```

end

Hope that gives you some fresh ideas.

James Edward G. II

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 10:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/8 "2006-08-08T10:44:10Z")

</div>

Mauricio, the coverage tasks is awesome.

It is working for me now.

Speed is not an issue for me, as I only do coverage runs once in a  
while.

Thank you,  
Rob

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 1:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rcov-0-7-0-code-coverage-for-ruby/101375/9 "2006-08-07T13:42:24Z")

</div>

On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 12:15:30PM +0900, Robert MannI wrote:

> I am wondering, for a rails project, would this be the correct way to use  
> this?
> 
> rcov -Ilib test/\*\*/\*.rb
> 
> That works for me, albeit about 30% of my tests fail then, while when I run  
> them using the rake task (“rake”), they all pass. So I suppose I must be  
> doing something wrong.

As Assaph said, this can fail in some circumstances, the reason being  
that  
unit, functional and integration tests cannot always be run in the same  
process safely; this is why the test task in Rails apps executes them  
separately.

So, if you are lucky and there are no clashes, just

rcov --rails -Ilib test/\*\*/\*\_test.rb

would do. --rails tells rcov to ignore config/, environment/ and vendor/  
in  
the statistics.

Now, if you see that the outcome of the tests when run as shown above  
differs  
from the results given by rake test (as happened to you), you have to  
execute  
unit, functional and integration tests in three different processes.  
You can do it manually as follows:

rm -f coverage.data  
rcov --no-html --rails --aggregate coverage.data -Ilib  
test/unit/_\_test.rb  
rcov --no-html --rails --aggregate coverage.data -Ilib  
test/functional/_\_test.rb  
rcov --rails --aggregate coverage.data -Ilib  
test/integration/\*\_test.rb

–aggregate is used to merge the coverage data from the three runs in a  
single report; --no-html is used in the first two runs because anyway  
the  
last execution will create the report with all the information.

If you want a recipe to automate that, have a look at  
[eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?rcov+0.7.0)  
where I show a small snippet you can dump into e.g. lib/tasks/rcov.rake.  
It will generate a number of tasks in the test:coverage namespace, as  
well as  
a test:coverage task that runs all the tests under rcov.

Unfortunately, --aggregate is relatively slow because it has to save  
quite a  
lot of information across runs: all the Ruby code that was parsed, the  
coverage data, etc. There’s no way around that though. Of course, you  
can also  
create separate reports for unit, functional and integration tests  
(using -o  
to choose the destination dirs for the reports, and omitting  
–aggregate),  
but you won’t be able to obtain a single unified coverage rate that way.

HTH,
