geninfo(1) User Manuals geninfo(1)
NAME geninfo - Generate tracefiles from .da files
SYNOPSIS geninfo [-h|--help] [-v|--version] [-q|--quiet]
[-i|--initial] [-t|--test-name test-name]
[-o|--output-filename filename] [-f|--follow]
[-b|--base-directory directory]
[--checksum] [--no-checksum]
[--compat-libtool] [--no-compat-libtool]
[--gcov-tool tool] [--ignore-errors errors]
[--no-recursion] directory [--external] [--no-external]
[--config-file config-file] [--no-markers]
[--derive-func-data] [--compat mode=on|off|auto]
[--rc keyword=value]
[--include pattern] [--exclude pattern]
DESCRIPTION geninfo converts all GCOV coverage data files found in directory into
tracefiles, which the genhtml tool can convert to HTML output.
Unless the --output-filename option is specified, geninfo writes its
output to one file per .da file, the name of which is generated by sim‐
ply appending ".info" to the respective .da file name.
Note that the current user needs write access to both directory as well
as to the original source code location. This is necessary because some
temporary files have to be created there during the conversion process.
Note also that geninfo is called from within lcov, so that there is
usually no need to call it directly.
Exclusion markers
To exclude specific lines of code from a tracefile, you can add exclu‐
sion markers to the source code. Additionally you can exclude specific
branches from branch coverage without excluding the involved lines from
line and function coverage. Exclusion markers are keywords which can
for example be added in the form of a comment. See lcovrc(5) how to
override some of them.
The following markers are recognized by geninfo:
LCOV_EXCL_LINE
Lines containing this marker will be excluded.
LCOV_EXCL_START
Marks the beginning of an excluded section. The current line is
part of this section.
LCOV_EXCL_STOP
Marks the end of an excluded section. The current line not part
of this section.
LCOV_EXCL_BR_LINE
Lines containing this marker will be excluded from branch cover‐
age.
LCOV_EXCL_BR_START
Marks the beginning of a section which is excluded from branch
coverage. The current line is part of this section.
LCOV_EXCL_BR_STOP
Marks the end of a section which is excluded from branch cover‐
age. The current line not part of this section.
OPTIONS -b directory
--base-directory directory
Use directory as base directory for relative paths.
Use this option to specify the base directory of a build-envi‐
ronment when geninfo produces error messages like:
ERROR: could not read source file /home/user/project/sub‐
dir1/subdir2/subdir1/subdir2/file.c
In this example, use /home/user/project as base directory.
This option is required when using geninfo on projects built
with libtool or similar build environments that work with a base
directory, i.e. environments, where the current working direc‐
tory when invoking the compiler is not the same directory in
which the source code file is located.
Note that this option will not work in environments where multi‐
ple base directories are used. In that case use configuration
file setting geninfo_auto_base=1 (see lcovrc(5)).
--checksum
--no-checksum
Specify whether to generate checksum data when writing trace‐
files.
Use --checksum to enable checksum generation or --no-checksum to
disable it. Checksum generation is disabled by default.
When checksum generation is enabled, a checksum will be gener‐
ated for each source code line and stored along with the cover‐
age data. This checksum will be used to prevent attempts to com‐
bine coverage data from different source code versions.
If you don't work with different source code versions, disable
this option to speed up coverage data processing and to reduce
the size of tracefiles.
--compat mode=value[,mode=value,...]
Set compatibility mode.
Use --compat to specify that geninfo should enable one or more
compatibility modes when capturing coverage data. You can pro‐
vide a comma-separated list of mode=value pairs to specify the
values for multiple modes.
Valid values are:
on
Enable compatibility mode.
off
Disable compatibility mode.
auto
Apply auto-detection to determine if compatibility mode
is required. Note that auto-detection is not available
for all compatibility modes.
If no value is specified, 'on' is assumed as default value.
Valid modes are:
libtool
Enable this mode if you are capturing coverage data for a
project that was built using the libtool mechanism. See
also --compat-libtool.
The default value for this setting is 'on'.
hammer
Enable this mode if you are capturing coverage data for a
project that was built using a version of GCC 3.3 that
contains a modification (hammer patch) of later GCC ver‐
sions. You can identify a modified GCC 3.3 by checking
the build directory of your project for files ending in
the extension '.bbg'. Unmodified versions of GCC 3.3 name
these files '.bb'.
The default value for this setting is 'auto'.
split_crc
Enable this mode if you are capturing coverage data for a
project that was built using a version of GCC 4.6 that
contains a modification (split function checksums) of
later GCC versions. Typical error messages when running
geninfo on coverage data produced by such GCC versions
are ´out of memory' and 'reached unexpected end of file'.
The default value for this setting is 'auto'
--compat-libtool
--no-compat-libtool
Specify whether to enable libtool compatibility mode.
Use --compat-libtool to enable libtool compatibility mode or
--no-compat-libtool to disable it. The libtool compatibility
mode is enabled by default.
When libtool compatibility mode is enabled, geninfo will assume
that the source code relating to a .da file located in a direc‐
tory named ".libs" can be found in its parent directory.
If you have directories named ".libs" in your build environment
but don't use libtool, disable this option to prevent problems
when capturing coverage data.
--config-file config-file
Specify a configuration file to use.
When this option is specified, neither the system-wide configu‐
ration file /etc/lcovrc, nor the per-user configuration file
~/.lcovrc is read.
This option may be useful when there is a need to run several
instances of geninfo with different configuration file options
in parallel.
--derive-func-data
Calculate function coverage data from line coverage data.
Use this option to collect function coverage data, even if the
version of the gcov tool installed on the test system does not
provide this data. lcov will instead derive function coverage
data from line coverage data and information about which lines
belong to a function.
--exclude pattern
Exclude source files matching pattern.
Use this switch if you want to exclude coverage data for a par‐
ticular set of source files matching any of the given patterns.
Multiple patterns can be specified by using multiple --exclude
command line switches. The patterns will be interpreted as shell
wildcard patterns (note that they may need to be escaped accord‐
ingly to prevent the shell from expanding them first).
Can be combined with the --include command line switch. If a
given file matches both the include pattern and the exclude pat‐
tern, the exclude pattern will take precedence.
--external
--no-external
Specify whether to capture coverage data for external source
files.
External source files are files which are not located in one of
the directories specified by --directory or --base-directory.
Use --external to include external source files while capturing
coverage data or --no-external to ignore this data.
Data for external source files is included by default.
-f
--follow
Follow links when searching .da files.
--gcov-tool tool
Specify the location of the gcov tool.
-h
--help
Print a short help text, then exit.
--include pattern
Include source files matching pattern.
Use this switch if you want to include coverage data for only a
particular set of source files matching any of the given pat‐
terns. Multiple patterns can be specified by using multiple
--include command line switches. The patterns will be inter‐
preted as shell wildcard patterns (note that they may need to be
escaped accordingly to prevent the shell from expanding them
first).
--ignore-errors errors
Specify a list of errors after which to continue processing.
Use this option to specify a list of one or more classes of
errors after which geninfo should continue processing instead of
aborting.
errors can be a comma-separated list of the following keywords:
gcov: the gcov tool returned with a non-zero return code.
source: the source code file for a data set could not be found.
-i
--initial
Capture initial zero coverage data.
Run geninfo with this option on the directories containing .bb,
.bbg or .gcno files before running any test case. The result is
a "baseline" coverage data file that contains zero coverage for
every instrumented line and function. Combine this data file
(using lcov -a) with coverage data files captured after a test
run to ensure that the percentage of total lines covered is cor‐
rect even when not all object code files were loaded during the
test.
Note: currently, the --initial option does not generate branch
coverage information.
--no-markers
Use this option if you want to get coverage data without regard
to exclusion markers in the source code file.
--no-recursion
Use this option if you want to get coverage data for the speci‐
fied directory only without processing subdirectories.
-o output-filename
--output-filename output-filename
Write all data to output-filename.
If you want to have all data written to a single file (for eas‐
ier handling), use this option to specify the respective file‐
name. By default, one tracefile will be created for each pro‐
cessed .da file.
-q
--quiet
Do not print progress messages.
Suppresses all informational progress output. When this switch
is enabled, only error or warning messages are printed.
--rc keyword=value
Override a configuration directive.
Use this option to specify a keyword=value statement which over‐
rides the corresponding configuration statement in the lcovrc
configuration file. You can specify this option more than once
to override multiple configuration statements. See lcovrc(5)
for a list of available keywords and their meaning.
-t testname
--test-name testname
Use test case name testname for resulting data. Valid test case
names can consist of letters, decimal digits and the underscore
character ('_').
This proves useful when data from several test cases is merged
(i.e. by simply concatenating the respective tracefiles) in
which case a test name can be used to differentiate between data
from each test case.
-v
--version
Print version number, then exit.
FILES /etc/lcovrc
The system-wide configuration file.
~/.lcovrc
The per-user configuration file.
Following is a quick description of the tracefile format as used by
genhtml, geninfo and lcov.
A tracefile is made up of several human-readable lines of text, divided
into sections. If available, a tracefile begins with the testname which
is stored in the following format:
TN:<test name>
For each source file referenced in the .da file, there is a section
containing filename and coverage data:
SF:<absolute path to the source file>
Following is a list of line numbers for each function name found in the
source file:
FN:<line number of function start>,<function name>
Next, there is a list of execution counts for each instrumented func‐
tion:
FNDA:<execution count>,<function name>
This list is followed by two lines containing the number of functions
found and hit:
FNF:<number of functions found>
FNH:<number of function hit>
Branch coverage information is stored which one line per branch:
BRDA:<line number>,<block number>,<branch number>,<taken>
Block number and branch number are gcc internal IDs for the branch.
Taken is either '-' if the basic block containing the branch was never
executed or a number indicating how often that branch was taken.
Branch coverage summaries are stored in two lines:
BRF:<number of branches found>
BRH:<number of branches hit>
Then there is a list of execution counts for each instrumented line
(i.e. a line which resulted in executable code):
DA:<line number>,<execution count>[,<checksum>]
Note that there may be an optional checksum present for each instru‐
mented line. The current geninfo implementation uses an MD5 hash as
checksumming algorithm.
At the end of a section, there is a summary about how many lines were
found and how many were actually instrumented:
LH:<number of lines with a non-zero execution count>
LF:<number of instrumented lines>
Each sections ends with:
end_of_record
In addition to the main source code file there are sections for all
#included files which also contain executable code.
Note that the absolute path of a source file is generated by interpret‐
ing the contents of the respective .bb file (see gcov (1) for more
information on this file type). Relative filenames are prefixed with
the directory in which the .bb file is found.
Note also that symbolic links to the .bb file will be resolved so that
the actual file path is used instead of the path to a link. This
approach is necessary for the mechanism to work with the /proc/gcov
files.
AUTHOR Peter Oberparleiter <Peter.Oberparleiter@de.ibm.com>
SEE ALSO lcov(1), lcovrc(5), genhtml(1), genpng(1), gendesc(1), gcov(1)
2019-02-28 LCOV 1.14 geninfo(1)
