Coverage command line usage

history:20090524T134300, brand new docs.
history:20090613T164000, final touches for 3.0
history:20090913T084400, new command line syntax
history:20091004T170700, changes for 3.1
history:20091127T200700, changes for 3.2
history:20100223T200600, changes for 3.3
history:20100725T211700, updated for 3.4

When you install coverage.py, a command-line script simply called coverage is placed in your Python scripts directory. Coverage has a number of commands which determine the action performed:

  • run – Run a Python program and collect execution data.
  • report – Report coverage results.
  • html – Produce annotated HTML listings with coverage results.
  • xml – Produce an XML report with coverage results.
  • annotate – Annotate source files with coverage results.
  • erase – Erase previously collected coverage data.
  • combine – Combine together a number of data files.
  • debug – Get diagnostic information.

Help is available with the help command, or with the --help switch on any other command:

$ coverage help
$ coverage help run
$ coverage run --help

Version information for coverage.py can be displayed with coverage --version.

Any command can use a configuration file by specifying it with the --rcfile=FILE command-line switch. Any option you can set on the command line can also be set in the configuration file. This can be a better way to control coverage.py since the configuration file can be checked into source control, and can provide options that other invocation techniques (like test runner plugins) may not offer. See Configuration files for more details.

Execution

You collect execution data by running your Python program with the run command:

$ coverage run my_program.py arg1 arg2
blah blah ..your program's output.. blah blah

Your program runs just as if it had been invoked with the Python command line. Arguments after your file name are passed to your program as usual in sys.argv.

If you want branch coverage measurement, use the --branch flag. Otherwise only statement coverage is measured.

You can specify the code to measure with the --source, --include, and --omit switches. See Specifying source files for more details.

By default, coverage does not measure code installed with the Python interpreter, for example, the standard library. If you want to measure that code as well as your own, add the -L flag.

If your coverage results seem to be overlooking code that you know has been executed, try running coverage again with the --timid flag. This uses a simpler but slower trace method. Projects that use DecoratorTools, including TurboGears, will need to use --timid to get correct results. This option can also be enabled by setting the environment variable COVERAGE_OPTIONS to --timid.

If you are measuring coverage in a multi-process program, or across a number of machines, you’ll want the --parallel-mode switch to keep the data separate during measurement. See Combining data files below.

Data file

Coverage collects execution data in a file called ”.coverage”. If need be, you can set a new file name with the COVERAGE_FILE environment variable.

By default,each run of your program starts with an empty data set. If you need to run your program multiple times to get complete data (for example, because you need to supply disjoint options), you can accumulate data across runs with the -a flag on the run command.

To erase the collected data, use the erase command:

$ coverage erase

Combining data files

If you need to collect coverage data from different machines or processes, coverage can combine multiple files into one for reporting. Use the -p flag during execution to append distinguishing information to the .coverage data file name.

Once you have created a number of these files, you can copy them all to a single directory, and use the combine command to combine them into one .coverage data file:

$ coverage combine

Reporting

Coverage provides a few styles of reporting, with the report, html, annotate, and xml commands. They share a number of common options.

The command-line arguments are module or file names to report on, if you’d like to report on a subset of the data collected.

The --include and --omit flags specify lists of filename patterns. They control which files to report on, and are described in more detail in Specifying source files.

The -i or --ignore-errors switch tells coverage.py to ignore problems encountered trying to find source files to report on. This can be useful if some files are missing, or if your Python execution is tricky enough that file names are synthesized without real source files.

Coverage summary

The simplest reporting is a textual summary produced with report:

$ coverage report
Name                      Stmts   Miss  Cover
---------------------------------------------
my_program                   20      4    80%
my_module                    15      2    86%
my_other_module              56      6    89%
---------------------------------------------
TOTAL                        91     12    87%

For each module executed, the report shows the count of executable statements, the number of those statements missed, and the resulting coverage, expressed as a percentage.

The -m flag also shows the line numbers of missing statements:

$ coverage report -m
Name                      Stmts   Miss  Cover   Missing
-------------------------------------------------------
my_program                   20      4    80%   33-35, 39
my_module                    15      2    86%   8, 12
my_other_module              56      6    89%   17-23
-------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL                        91     12    87%

You can restrict the report to only certain files by naming them on the command line:

$ coverage report -m my_program.py my_other_module.py
Name                      Stmts   Miss  Cover   Missing
-------------------------------------------------------
my_program                   20      4    80%   33-35, 39
my_other_module              56      6    89%   17-23
-------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL                        76     10    87%

Other common reporting options are described above in Reporting.

HTML annotation

Coverage can annotate your source code for which lines were executed and which were not. The html command creates an HTML report similar to the report summary, but as an HTML file. Each module name links to the source file decorated to show the status of each line.

Here’s a sample report.

Lines are highlighted green for executed, red for missing, and gray for excluded. The counts at the top of the file are buttons to turn on and off the highlighting.

The -d argument specifies an output directory, defaulting to “htmlcov”:

$ coverage html -d coverage_html

Other common reporting options are described above in Reporting.

Text annotation

The annotate command produces a text annotation of your source code. With a -d argument specifying an output directory, each Python file becomes a text file in that directory. Without -d, the files are written into the same directories as the original Python files.

Coverage status for each line of source is indicated with a character prefix:

> executed
! missing (not executed)
- excluded

For example:

  # A simple function, never called with x==1

> def h(x):
      """Silly function."""
-     if 0:   #pragma: no cover
-         pass
>     if x == 1:
!         a = 1
>     else:
>         a = 2

Other common reporting options are described above in Reporting.

XML reporting

The xml command writes coverage data to a “coverage.xml” file in a format compatible with Cobertura.

You can specify the name of the output file with the --output-xml switch.

Other common reporting options are described above in Reporting.

Diagnostics

The debug command shows internal information to help diagnose problems. If you are reporting a bug about coverage.py, including the output of this command can often help:

$ coverage debug sys > please_attach_to_bug_report.txt

Two types of information are available: sys to show system configuration, and data to show a summary of the collected coverage data.

Table Of Contents

Previous topic

Installation

Next topic

Configuration files