alcov has been designed as a simple file format to get coverage information from binaries, while using minimum space. The main goal of alcov is to provide a clear, simple and usable specification for block & edge coverage, usable across different projects. It does not aim at replacing other formats, but instead to provide a simple and easily implementable format. It has been hightly inspired by drcov.
Other coverage file format, among others:
- drcov. An older version of drcov has been described in a blogpost.
- profraw, used by the LLVM project for storing coverage information.
- gcov. GCC's coverage format.
The latest version of alcov is v0.1.
A library (developed in Rust) is available to manipulate alcov. It can be found in the alcov subdirectory. The crate has features describing the version to compile, following the version of the alcov specification.
A user-friendly CLI for alcov is available in the alcov-cli subdirectory. Once again, the version of alcov specification can be set through a feature.
Nearly strong no compatibility guarantee is enforced between versions. The corresponding specification and header file should be used for a given version. The only guarantee shared between versions are the 3 first fields of the trace file:
- The magic (64 bits) is always equal to
ALCOV_MAGIC(0xdda28f766f636c61). - The major version (unsigned 64 bits integer) is incremented by one for each new important release.
- The minor version (unsigned 64 bits integer) is incremented by one for each minor revision.
During v0, minor version changes can be significant and break completely from one version to another.