Why code coverage analysis?
Code coverage is used in software testing, as it measures the quality of your test procedures, by describing the degree to which the source code of a program has been tested.
All embedded developers are used to debugging; the process used to understand the behavior of a program such that an error can be corrected. Debugging however, requires that an error has been detected in the first place. Programming errors that you do not know exist cannot be debugged or corrected.
Code coverage analysis is a powerful tool for finding more of the bugs that most likely do exist in your software – whether you are aware of them or not. As such, a code coverage analysis tool can help you find more programming errors, which enables you to release a software product of better quality.
More technically, code coverage analysis finds areas in your program that is not covered by your test cases, enabling you to create additional tests that cover otherwise untested parts of your program. It is thus important to understand that code coverage helps you understand the quality of your test procedures, not the quality of the code itself.
There are many types of code coverage of different strengths, such as statement or block coverage, function and function call coverage, branch coverage, Modified condition/Decision coverage (MC/DC), etc.
Atollic TrueANALYZER® automate these work tasks by performing advanced code coverage analysis of your application as it runs in your target hardware.