DeepCover

Deep Cover aims to be the best coverage tool for Ruby code:

• more accurate line coverage
• branch coverage
• can be used as a drop-in replacement for the built-in Coverage library.

It reports a more accurate picture of your code usage. In particular a line is considered covered if and only if it is entirely executed:

def foo(something: false)
  bar if something  # => This is considered covered by builtin coverage,
                    #    even though `bar` might not even exist
end

# somewhere in a test:
foo

Optionally, branch coverage will detect if some branches are never taken. In the following example, test_foo only provides values for x that respond to :to_s, thus the implicit else is never tested (i.e. a value of x that does not respond to :to_s)

def foo(x)
  x = x.to_s if x.respond_to? :to_s
  # ...
end

def test_foo
  assert_equal something, foo(42)
  assert_equal something_else, foo(:hello)
end

Examples

These examples are direct outputs from our HTML reporter:

• Rails' activesupport
• Rails' activerecord

DeepCover vs builtin coverage

Line coverage: MRI doesn't cover some lines (e.g. when some_value).

Node coverage: MRI provides no way to tell which parts of any line is evaluated. DeepCover covers everything.

Method coverage: MRI considers every method defined, including methods defined on objects or via define_method, class_eval, etc. For Istanbul output, DeepCover has a different approach and covers all def and all blocks.

Note on loops (!): DeepCover doesn't consider loops to be branches, but it's easy to support it if needed.

Installation

gem install deep-cover

First we present the official way. There are also quick and dirty ways to try deep-cover without changing much your current setup, which we present afterwards.

Canonical installation

1 Add the deep-cover gem as a dependency:

For a standalone project (Rails app), add deep-cover to your Gemfile:

gem 'deep-cover', '~> 0.4', group: :test, require: false

Then run bundle

For a gem, you want to add spec.add_development_dependency 'deep-cover', '~> 0.4' to your gemspec file instead.

2 Require deep-cover

You must call require 'deep-cover' before the code you want to cover is loaded.

Typically, you want to insert that line in your test/test_helper.rb or spec/spec_helper.rb file at the right place. For example

ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'test'
require 'deep-cover' # Must be before the environment is loaded on the next line
require File.expand_path('../../config/environment', __FILE__)
require 'rails/test_help'
# ...

3 Create a config file (optional)

You may want to create a config file .deep-cover.rb at the root of your project, where you can set the config as you wish.

# File .deep-cover.rb
DeepCover.config do
  ignore :default_arguments
  # ...
end

4 Launch it

Even after DeepCover is required and configured, only a very minimal amount of code is actually loaded and coverage is not started.

The easiest way to actually start it is to use deep-cover exec instead of bundle exec.

For example:

$ deep-cover exec rspec
# ...all the output of rspec
# ...coverage report

Command line interface (for a Rails app or a Gem):

An easy way to try deep-cover, without any configuration needed:

deep-cover /path/to/rails/app/or/gem

This assumes your project has a Gemfile, and that your default rake task is set to execute all tests (otherwise set the --command option)

It also uses our builtin HTML reporter. Check the produced coverage/index.html.

Projects using builtin Coverage (including SimpleCov) users

To make it easier to transition for projects already using the builtin Coverage library (or indirectly those using SimpleCov), there is a way to overwrite the Coverage library using deep-cover's extended coverage.

Add to your Gemfile gem 'deep-cover', require: false, then run bundle.

Before you require coverage or simplecov, do a require 'deep_cover/builtin_takeover'.

For example, the test/test_helper.rb file for simplecov users will look like

require 'deep_cover/builtin_takeover'
require 'simplecov'
SimpleCov.start
# rest of `test_helper.rb`

Usage

Configuration

configure is used to specify how specific DeepCover should be and which files it should analyse. The following code reflects the default settings:

DeepCover.configure do
  ignore_uncovered :raise, :default_arguments
  detect_uncovered :trivial_if
  # TODO
  cover_paths %w[app lib]
end

The file .deep-cover.rb is loaded automatically when requiring deep-cover and is the best place to put the configuration.

Note: The configuration block is only executed when deep-cover is actually started.

Custom filters

deep-cover comes with a few filters that make it possible to ignore certain uncovered codes.

It is easy to add you own filters.

For example, if one wants to ignore uncovered calls to raise but the code uses our_custom_raise instead, the following with work:

DeepCover.configure do
  ignore_uncovered do
    type == :send &&
      receiver == nil &&
      message == :our_custom_raise
  end
end

Development

After checking out the repo, run bundle then rake dev:install to install dependencies. Then, run rake to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

For detailed analysis:

deep-cover -d -e "if(:try_me); puts 'cool'; end"

To run one of the specs in spec:

bin/cov boolean

More details in the contributing guide.

Status

Currently in development. Alpha stage, API still subject to change. Best time to get involved though ;-)

Contributing

Please ask questions on StackOverflow.com. Maintainers monitor the tag deep-cover.rb.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/deep-cover/deep-cover. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the DeepCover project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.