Use this option to specify the base directory of a build-environment when geninfo produces error messages like:

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 directory 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 multiple base directories are used. In that case use configuration file setting geninfo_auto_base=1 (see lcovrc(5)).

By default, geninfo expects to find the .gcno and .gcda files (compile- and run-time data, respectively) in the same directory.

When this option is used:

then geninfo will look for .gcno file

when it finds .gcda file

Use this option when you have used the GCOV_PREFIX environment variable to direct the gcc or llvm runtime environment to write coverage data files to somewhere other than the directory where the code was originally compiled. See gcc(1) and/or search for GCOV_PREFIX and GCOV_PREFIX_STRIP.

This option can be used several times to specify multiple alternate directories to look for .gcno files. This may be useful if your application uses code which is compiled in many separate locations - for example, common libraries that are shared between teams.

This is equivalent to using the option "--rc lcov_branch_coverage=1"; the option was added to better match the genhml interface.

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 generated for each source code line and stored along with the coverage data. This checksum will be used to prevent attempts to combine 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.

Note that this options is somewhat subsumed by the --version-script option - which does something similar, but at the 'whole file' level.

Use --compat to specify that geninfo should enable one or more compatibility modes when capturing coverage data. You can provide a comma-separated list of mode=value pairs to specify the values for multiple modes.

Valid values are:

on

If no value is specified, 'on' is assumed as default value.

Valid modes are:

libtool

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 .gcda file located in a directory 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.

When this option is specified, neither the system-wide configuration 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.

Note that this option must be specified in full - abbreviations are not supported.

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.

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.

If the --gcov-tool option is used multiple times, then the arguments are concatenated when the callback is executed - similar to how the gcc -Xlinker parameter works. This provides a possibly easier way to pass arguments to your tool, without requiring a wrapper script. In that case, your callback will be executed as: tool-0 'tool-1; ... 'filename'. Note that the second and subsequent arguments are quoted when passed to the shell, in order to handle parameters which contain spaces.

A common use for this option is to enable LLVM:

Note: 'llvm-cov gcov da_file_name' will generate output in gcov-compatible format as required by lcov.

If not specified, 'gcov' is used by default.

Use this switch if you want to include coverage data for only a particular set of source files matching any of the given patterns. Multiple patterns can be specified by using multiple --include command line switches. The patterns will be interpreted as shell wildcard patterns (note that they may need to be escaped accordingly to prevent the shell from expanding them first).

See the lcov man page for details

Use this switch if you want to exclude coverage data from a particular 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 accordingly to prevent the shell from expanding them first). Note: The pattern must be specified to match the absolute path of each source file.

Can be combined with the --include command line switch. If a given file matches both the include pattern and the exclude pattern, the exclude pattern will take precedence.

See the lcov man page for details.

Note that this option requires that you use a gcc version which is new enough to support function begin/end line reports.

Use this switch if you want to exclude line and branch coverage data for some particular constructs in your code (e.g., some complicated macro). See the lcov man page for details.

This option can also be configured permanently using the configuration file option forget_testcase_names.

Use this option to specify a list of one or more classes of errors after which geninfo should continue processing instead of aborting. Note that the tool will generate a warning (rather than a fatal error) unless you ignore the error two (or more) times:

errors can be a comma-separated list of the following keywords:

branch: branch ID (2nd field in the .info file 'BRDA' entry) does not follow expected integer sequence.

callback: Version script error.

corrupt: corrupt/unreadable file found.

count: An excessive number of messages of some class have been reported - subsequent messages of that type will be suppressed. The limit can be controlled by the 'max_message_count' variable. See the lcovrc man page.

deprecated: You are using a deprecated option. This option will be removed in an upcoming release - so you should change your scripts now.

empty: the .info data file is empty (e.g., because all the code was 'removed' or excluded.

format: unexpected syntax found in .info file.

gcov: the gcov tool returned with a non-zero return code.

graph: the graph file could not be found or is corrupted.

mismatch: Inconsistent entries found in trace file:

• branch expression (3rd field in the .info file 'BRDA' entry) of merge data does not match, or

• function execution count (FNDA:...) but no function declaration (FN:...).
  

negative: negative 'hit' count found.

Note that negative counts may be caused by a known GCC bug - see

and try compiling with "-fprofile-update=atomic". You will need to recompile, re-run your tests, and re-capture coverage data.

package: a required perl package is not installed on your system. In some cases, it is possible to ignore this message and continue - however, certain features will be disabled in that case.

parallel: various types of errors related to parallelism - e.g., child process died due to some error. If you see an error related to parallel execution, it may be a good idea to remove the --parallel flag and try again.

source: the source code file for a data set could not be found.

unsupported: the requested feature is not supported for this tool configuration. For example, function begin/end line range exclusions use some GCOV features that are not available in older GCC releases.

unused: the include/exclude/erase/omit/substitute pattern did not match any file pathnames.

version: revision control IDs of the file which we are trying to merge are not the same - line numbering and other information may be incorrect.

Also see man lcovrc for a discussion of the 'max_message_count' parameter which can be used to control the number of warnings which are emitted before all subsequent messages are suppressed. This can be used to reduce log file volume.

This command line option corresponds to the stop_on_error [0|1] lcovrc option. See the lcovrc man page for more details.

By default, intermediate files are deleted.

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 correct even when not all object code files were loaded during the test.

Note: currently, the --initial option does not generate branch coverage information.

If you want to have all data written to a single file (for easier handling), use this option to specify the respective filename. By default, one tracefile will be created for each processed .gcda file.

See the genhtml man page for more details on the version script.

Messages are sent to stdout unless there is no output file (i.e., if the coverage data is written to stdout rather than to a file) and to stderr otherwise.

Decreased verbosity will suppress 'progress' messages for example - while error and warning messages will continue to be printed.

This option may be useful if the compute farm environment imposes strict limits on resource utilization such that the job will be killed if it tries to use too many parallel children - but the user does now know a priori what the permissible maximum is. This option enables the tool to use maximum parallelism - up to the limit imposed by the memory restriction.

Use this option to specify a keyword=value statement which overrides 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.

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.