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gccgcov

Corrected usage of gcov on executable and static library

I have a very simple example of using gcov:

  • library.cpp file compiled and turned into library.a
  • main.cpp file compiled into executable and uses library.a

All of this done via a simple bash script:

g++ -c library.cpp -Wall -fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage -o library.o
ar rvs library.a library.o
g++ main.cpp -Wall -fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage library.a -o main

Now at this point I have the folllowing files (ignoring source and build script):

library.o
library.gcno
library.a

main.cpp
main
main.gcno

So far so good. Now I run my main executable, which creates:

main.gcda
library.gcda

Again all as expected. Now for the question - when I run gcov main.cpp I don't get any gcov files for library.cpp. Is that expected?

Do I really need to call gcov on every source file I may have at any point in time? Is there not a way to call the first source file i.e main.cpp and have it produce coverage stats for each piece of source main goes on to call?

I appear to get gcov files for a lot of core library code that main.cpp uses without need to call them directly with gcov (ostream.gov, locale.gcov...) just not library.gcov

Solution

  • Normally you'd call gcov *.gcno.