Hi.
Let's discourage people from parsing of the coverage files.
We invented `gcov --json-format` for those who need a machine
readable format.
I'm going to install the patch if there are no objections.
Martin
gcc/ChangeLog:
2020-05-07 Martin Liska <mli...@suse.cz>
PR gcov-profile/94928
* gcov-io.h: Add caveat about coverage format parsing and
possible outdated documentation.
---
gcc/gcov-io.h | 8 +++++++-
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/gcc/gcov-io.h b/gcc/gcov-io.h
index d21a43c4c31..2d99932a4b8 100644
--- a/gcc/gcov-io.h
+++ b/gcc/gcov-io.h
@@ -25,7 +25,13 @@ see the files COPYING3 and COPYING.RUNTIME respectively. If not, see
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. */
-/* Coverage information is held in two files. A notes file, which is
+/* CAVEAT: Coverage information files should not be parsed directly, but
+ we would rather recommend using `gcov --json-format` that provides
+ a machine readable coverage information.
+
+ Note that the following file format documentation can be outdated.
+
+ Coverage information is held in two files. A notes file, which is
generated by the compiler, and a data file, which is generated by
the program under test. Both files use a similar structure. We do
not attempt to make these files backwards compatible with previous
