code coverage tool

[Anonymous]

"John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:v6950ea0d6m824 at news.supernews.com...
>
> "Alex Martelli" wrote
> > John Roth wrote:
> >    ...
> > > My experiance with pyCover is that it is about a factor of three
> > > slower
> > > than running without it, so I'd expect the same slowdown, or
> > > somewhat more,
> > > for a threaded approach. For a coverage analyzer, that's not a
> > > significant
> > > problem for me. If you're trying to do volume testing, it could be
> > > prohibitive.
> >
> > Haven't tried pyCover, but I _have_ noticed the hotshot "profiler" has
> > all the hooks one needs to use it in a simple statement-coverage mode,
> > and it seems to have very low overhead when used that way; it's just a
> > question of interpreting its log files correctly, and, while not well
> > documented, there's even a module in the standard library to help out
> > with that task.  Hmmm....
>
> Actually, it doesn't. pyCover uses the debugger, not the profiler.
> The profiler only gives you function entry and exit, it doesn't allow
> you
> to check for things like not taking one path of a branch. This is
> rather obviously needed for statement (and branch) coverage tests.
>
> Also notice that neither one does threads automatically, which is
> what the OP wanted.
>
> John Roth

There's a paper at our web site that shows how to implement very low
overhead branch coverage tools for arbitrary languages.
(Guess Python qualifies as one of those :-).  Doesn't use
debuggers, internal system tools; depends on an external
program transformation tool that can process the language
(We have such a tool, and it can process Python).
See the .pdf file linked from the page:
http://www.semdesigns.com/Products/TestCoverage/index.html
The idea has been implemented for Java (including
multiple threads), C, COBOL, and a highly parallel
language called PARLANSE.


--
Ira D. Baxter, Ph.D., CTO   512-250-1018
Semantic Designs, Inc.      www.semdesigns.com




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