Coverage.py vs. NCover vs. PHPUnit vs. Python Comparison Chart

Coverage.py is a tool for measuring code coverage of Python programs. It monitors your program, noting which parts of the code have been executed, then analyzes the source to identify code that could have been executed but was not. Coverage measurement is typically used to gauge the effectiveness of tests. It can show which parts of your code are being exercised by tests, and which are not. Use coverage run to run your test suite and gather data. However you normally run your test suite, and you can run your test runner under coverage. If your test runner command starts with “python”, just replace the initial “python” with “coverage run”. To limit coverage measurement to code in the current directory, and also find files that weren’t executed at all, add the source argument to your coverage command line. By default, it will measure line (statement) coverage. It can also measure branch coverage. It can tell you what tests ran which lines.

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.