Code coverage

This article is about coverage based on source code. For coverage based on requirements, see Test coverage.
Program execution
General concepts
Types of code
Compilation strategies
Notable runtimes
Notable compilers & toolchains

In software engineering, code coverage, also called test coverage, is a percentage measure of the degree to which the source code of a program is executed when a particular test suite is run. A program with high code coverage has more of its source code executed during testing, which suggests it has a lower chance of containing undetected software bugs compared to a program with low code coverage.[1][2] Many different metrics can be used to calculate test coverage. Some of the most basic are the percentage of program subroutines and the percentage of program statements called during execution of the test suite.

Code coverage was among the first methods invented for systematic software testing. The first published reference was by Miller and Maloney in Communications of the ACM, in 1963.[3]

  1. ^ Brader, Larry; Hilliker, Howie; Wills, Alan (March 2, 2013). "Chapter 2 Unit Testing: Testing the Inside". Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012. Microsoft. p. 30. ISBN 978-1621140184. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  2. ^ Williams, Laurie; Smith, Ben; Heckman, Sarah. "Test Coverage with EclEmma". Open Seminar Software Engineering. North Carolina State University. Archived from the original on 14 March 2016. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  3. ^ Joan C. Miller, Clifford J. Maloney (February 1963). "Systematic mistake analysis of digital computer programs". Communications of the ACM. 6 (2). New York, NY, USA: ACM: 58–63. doi:10.1145/366246.366248. ISSN 0001-0782.