Measuring the test coverage is something many people think is a good idea. But is it a good idea? It depends on the quality of the tests. Test coverage may be a good measurement if the tests are good. But suppose that we have a high degree of test coverage and bad tests?
I will show two examples of how to get a 100% test coverage using Cobertura. They will be based on a set of good tests and a set of bad tests.
How is test coverage calculated?
Test coverage is calculated by recording which lines of code that has been executed. If the code has been executed through a test in a testing framework then we have calculated the test coverage.
The calculation is done using these steps:
- Start with instrumenting compiled code
- Execute the instrumented code
- Each execution of a line is recorded in a log
- Combining this execution log with the source code enables us to calculate how many lines out of the total number of lines that has been executed
We will be able to say that 47% of the lines in the source code has been executed. If the execution is done through test code, this will give us a measurement of the test coverage.
