JCov vs. NCover vs. PHPUnit vs. Python Comparison Chart

The JCov open-source project is used to gather quality metrics associated with the production of test suites. JCov is being opened in order to facilitate the practice of verifying test execution of regression tests in OpenJDK development. The main motivation behind JCov is the transparency of test coverage metrics. The advantage to promoting standard coverage based on JCov is that OpenJDK developers will be able to use a code coverage tool that stays in the 'lock step' with Java language and VM developments. JCov is a pure java implementation of a code coverage tool that provides a means to measure and analyze dynamic code coverage of Java programs. JCov provides functionality to collect method, linear block, and branch coverage, as well as show uncovered execution paths. It is also able to show a program's source code annotated with coverage information. From a testing perspective, JCov is most useful to determine execution paths.

PHPUnit requires the dom and json extensions, which are normally enabled by default. PHPUnit also requires the pcre, reflection, and spl extensions. These standard extensions are enabled by default and cannot be disabled without patching PHP’s build system and/or C sources. The code coverage report feature requires the Xdebug (2.7.0 or later) and tokenizer extensions. Generating XML reports requires the xmlwriter extension. Unit Tests are primarily written as a good practice to help developers identify and fix bugs, to refactor code and to serve as documentation for a unit of software under test. To achieve these benefits, unit tests ideally should cover all the possible paths in a program. One unit test usually covers one specific path in one function or method. However a test method is not necessarily an encapsulated, independent entity. Often there are implicit dependencies between test methods, hidden in the implementation scenario of a test.