Dell Customer Communication - Confidential > From: Martin Liška <mli...@suse.cz> > Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2019 4:56 AM > > On 6/18/19 10:40 AM, Richard Biener wrote: > > I don't think we want to expose -auxbase. Iff then an alternate way > > to specify a coverage output file name. > > I'm not aware of it. > > @David: Can you please summarize what you want to achieve with the .gcno > files? > I can then help you. > > Martin
Thanks. Short answer: Some of the GNU/Linux test coverage related tools want them, so I want them to be available. Longer answer: We have purchased a third party tool for providing code test coverage related information. We do not plan to abandon that tool as it provides more than just test coverage. But, for test coverage at least, I would like an alternative. I am exploring the use of GCC and related tools for this. Our target is embedded, which presents a set of challenges. The set up / tear down glue code will need to be written. The operating system does not exit. Data will be dumped via a network connection, not to a local disk. Coverage counters need to be dumped and/or cleared on demand. Additionally, since the system supports not just cold boot but also warm boot, initialized .data is prohibited. So, it will be necessary to either put the data into a section with a different name and/or (ideally, both) have run-time initialization. [My gut is that adding a command line switch to set the section name and finding the code that actually writes out the data to make use of it won't be hard. And that run-time initialization will be significantly harder.] I don't know the details of how the tools make use of the *.gcno files, but I assume that they either need it or give better reports if they have it. I want people to be able to ascertain things like . this file has excellent coverage . this file has horrible coverage . this pull request affected these lines in these files, and when the test suite was run these affected lines were covered, but these other affected lines were not covered. . this push will affect these lines in these files, has my testing covered them? I'm sure I left something out. But, hopefully, you now have a clearer idea of what I'm trying to achieve. Questions? Feel free to ask. I don't as yet have management buy in on this...
