Real Case Application of Coverage Tests on Linux - Part 3

These special topics on coverage tests I made are based on real case situations of tests implementation, when I used to think about a nice way to certify that the user requirements needs related to a MythTV protocol API implementation I´m developing are well concerned. This API is not the official one, based on the MythTV server and client implementations, but another totally different effort based on GObject/GLib frameworks and object model.

The main test architecture I had developed is to allow that the test script's writer could develops the testing scripts with the minimum possible effort. So, I choose to use Python as the language of choice on the test scripts, because it's easier to learn, and removes the extra step of compiling code, because Python is interpreted. Each one of these Python scripts do, at least, one basic task: start a process with the testing program, compiled with the gcov program line arguments. A very simple strategy had been used to guarantee that the process testing stoped at a given known time, and the Python script could be signalized about the program termination.

You can see all these concepts, and see how to code gcov-based tests in practice, seeing my contribution on GMyth's SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gmyth.

Have a lot of fun! :)