UndercoverCI vs. PCOV

Elevate your Ruby testing and GitHub workflow with actionable insights on code coverage that empower your team to produce high-quality code efficiently while reducing the time dedicated to pull request evaluations. Instead of aiming for a flawless 100% test coverage, prioritize the reduction of defects in your pull requests by pinpointing untested code modifications before deployment. Following a simple configuration where your CI server executes tests and communicates coverage results to UndercoverCI, you can guarantee that every pull request undergoes thorough scrutiny; our tool examines the adjustments in your code and evaluates local test coverage for all altered classes, methods, and blocks, as relying solely on an overall coverage percentage is inadequate. This solution reveals untested methods and blocks, points out unused code paths, and assists in optimizing your test suite. You can seamlessly incorporate UndercoverCI’s hosted GitHub App or explore the variety of available Ruby gems. With a comprehensive integration for code reviews via GitHub, the setup process is swift and customized to meet your organization’s specific needs. Furthermore, the UndercoverCI initiative, along with its Ruby gems, is entirely open-source and can be freely employed in your local environment as well as throughout your CI/CD pipelines, making it an adaptable option for any development team. By embracing UndercoverCI, you enhance your code quality while also cultivating a culture of ongoing improvement within your team, ultimately leading to a more efficient development process. This initiative not only promotes better coding practices but also encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing among team members.

PCOV is a standalone driver that works with CodeCoverage for PHP. If it is not set up properly, PCOV will look for directories named src, lib, or app in the current working directory one after another; failing to find any of these, it defaults to the current directory, which can result in excessive resource usage by collecting coverage data for the entire test suite. To make the most of resources, it is recommended to use the exclude command in the PCOV configuration when test code is included. Additionally, to avoid unnecessary memory usage for traces and control flow graphs, PCOV should be tailored to meet the memory requirements of the test suite. It is also essential that the PCOV configuration exceeds the total count of files being tested, which includes all test files, in order to prevent table reallocations. It is crucial to understand that PCOV cannot work alongside Xdebug due to its internal override of the executor function, which may interfere with any extensions or SAPI that try to perform the same function. Importantly, PCOV allows code to run at full speed without added overhead, making it an efficient and effective tool for developers aiming for optimal performance while achieving reliable code coverage. Such features position PCOV as an indispensable resource for any PHP developer focused on enhancing application performance and reliability.