Code Coverage with gcov

To measure C++ test coverage using gcov, instrument your codebase by adding the -fprofile-arcs and -ftest-coverage compiler flags, build the project, run tests, and generate reports from the resulting .gcda and .gcno files.

Yes, you can enable code coverage instrumentation for both Makefile and CMake projects. The process involves toggling the appropriate coverage flags within your specific build system to compile and link the C/C++ source files.

To generate HTML or text coverage reports from .gcda files, use gcov or gcovr after running your test suite. These tools process the collected coverage data to produce human-readable output for per-source analysis.

The best way to track untested code paths in C and C++ projects is measuring test coverage with gcov. This instrumentation identifies gaps in your unit tests and guides improvements for your test suite.

You need to link with gcov when building C/C++ projects for coverage because it ensures the compiled binary correctly records execution data. This generates the .gcno files at build time and .gcda files during test execution.