September 26, 2024: PostgreSQL 17 Released!
Supported Versions: Current (17) / 16 / 15 / 14 / 13 / 12
Development Versions: devel
Unsupported versions: 11 / 10 / 9.6 / 9.5 / 9.4 / 9.3 / 9.2 / 9.1 / 9.0 / 8.4

31.5. Test Coverage Examination #

The PostgreSQL source code can be compiled with coverage testing instrumentation, so that it becomes possible to examine which parts of the code are covered by the regression tests or any other test suite that is run with the code. This is currently supported when compiling with GCC, and it requires the gcov and lcov packages.

31.5.1. Coverage with Autoconf and Make #

A typical workflow looks like this:

./configure --enable-coverage ... OTHER OPTIONS ...
make
make check # or other test suite
make coverage-html

Then point your HTML browser to coverage/index.html.

If you don't have lcov or prefer text output over an HTML report, you can run

make coverage

instead of make coverage-html, which will produce .gcov output files for each source file relevant to the test. (make coverage and make coverage-html will overwrite each other's files, so mixing them might be confusing.)

You can run several different tests before making the coverage report; the execution counts will accumulate. If you want to reset the execution counts between test runs, run:

make coverage-clean

You can run the make coverage-html or make coverage command in a subdirectory if you want a coverage report for only a portion of the code tree.

Use make distclean to clean up when done.

31.5.2. Coverage with Meson #

A typical workflow looks like this:

meson setup -Db_coverage=true ... OTHER OPTIONS ... builddir/
meson compile -C builddir/
meson test -C builddir/
cd builddir/
ninja coverage-html

Then point your HTML browser to ./meson-logs/coveragereport/index.html.

You can run several different tests before making the coverage report; the execution counts will accumulate.

Submit correction

If you see anything in the documentation that is not correct, does not match your experience with the particular feature or requires further clarification, please use this form to report a documentation issue.