[Pdx-pm] Devel::Cover, a lighting email

[Randall Hansen]

Devel::Cover, or, "why I can give up crack."

i ran across Devel::Cover[1] today, and wanted to share.  this would 
have been a lightning talk if i'd found it a couple weeks ago.

like some of you, i suppose, i've often wondered if i'm *really* 
testing all my code.  i try hard for best practice:  always write 
failing tests first; test every condition; make each line of code 
justify its existence with a test.

Devel::Cover takes a lot of the guesswork out of this.  i installed it 
this evening from CPAN and ran it on one of my projects, a smallish 
one; 12 modules, ~2k LOC including POD, ~2k tests.

Devel::Cover creates a database directory of test results which it then 
parses into nicely readable output.  you get plain text but also an 
HTML tree, with pages for each file and a line-by-line breakdown.  i'm 
so tickled that i've posted the whole suite of results; take a look[2].

i started off at 98.1%, and a couple tweaks got me to 98.5%.  one of 
the tweaks was something non-obvious (to me) that i'd missed.  i wrote 
a new test and it passed, and i've made a mental note to watch out for 
similar situations.  another tweak allowed me to delete a couple old 
lines of code that were never used or tested.

running it is simple.  my dev directory is pretty standard: ./lib for 
code and ./t for tests:  just what ExtUtils::ModuleMaker would give 
you.  i ran this:

  cover -delete
  HARNESS_PERL_SWITCHES=-MDevel::Cover make test
  cover

as i said, it's addicting.  "i'll eat dinner as soon as i get to 99%," 
i've been thinking.

it has limitations.  it says it likes some versions of perl better than 
others; it's pretty slow; it declares itself "alpha."  for all that, 
it's really useful.  highly recommended.

r

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1. http://search.cpan.org/dist/Devel-Cover/lib/Devel/Cover.pm
2. http://sonofhans.net/validop/cover_db/coverage.html