Re: [CodeCover-devel] CodeCover with C

[Tilmann S. <til...@go...>]

Hi Hamilton,

On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Hamilton Gross <ha...@ha...> wrote:
> I've just discovered CodeCover through a link on StackOverflow
> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/39329/what-is-your-favourite-code-coverage-tools-free-and-non-free]
> and am intrigued...
>
> I'm surprised that noone has written a plugin for the C language -
> especially as you have taken so much effort to document how to add new
> languages. Is there any particular reason for this? Is there already
> another tool which performs the equivalent as CodeCover for C?
Basically the only reason is that no one has stepped up yet to add C
support to CodeCover, there aren't really any technical difficulties
which would prevent C support.

I'm not aware of any free tool for C which allows you to collect
"advanced" coverage metrics like MC/DC and which is currently
maintained. E.g. there is GCT, but it is based on an ancient version
of GCC.

In my opinion it would make the most sense to reuse an existing
compiler frontend in order to do the instrumentation of the C source,
like GCT did with GCC. Clang (http://clang.llvm.org) would be
perfectly suited for this purpose, it is an open source BSD-licensed
C/C++/Objective-C frontend which is actively developed and designed as
a library, so that it can be used for many different purposes. It
already contains the necessary functionality to instrument source
code.

Greetings,

Tilmann