NCoverCop trunk... for coverage

If you grab NCoverCop from svn you can check out a couple of improvements.

• Refactoring Allowed.. If you delete tested code that is no longer needed, then this will unfortunately have the side effect of dropping your coverage percentage. NCoverCop allows for this by checking the number of untested lines. If it has not increased then the build is passes as you didn't make things worse.


• Coverage Differences are displayed when a build fails to give you an idea of the lines in the file that have become uncovered, or been added without test.


• sectionOfFilePathToCompareRegex allows you to specify a section of the document paths in the NCoverResults.xml files to ignore when comparing the files. This allows you to compare the build's file with your local one even if your trunk paths differ.

          coverageFile="${ncover.output.filename}"
          minCoveragePercentage="59"
          previousCoverageFile="${ncover.backup.filename}"
          autoUpdate="${environment::get-machine-name() == debug.buildbox.name}"
          sectionOfFilePathToCompareRegex="trunk.*"
     />

E.g. "trunk.*" (as above) will truncate "C:/something/trunk/somedir/file.cs" to "trunk/somedir/file.cs" when comparing with another results file.


Let me know if you find NCoverCop useful.


Note: Big big thanks to VarianInc for allowing me to do some work on NCoverCop on their dime. They have introduced a policy of using opensource code wherever they can, and contributing back to the community.

Varian (Melbourne) are by far the most agile company I have worked for to date. I highly recommend anyone that is keen to be part of a well functioning agile .Net team to get in contact with them. Email me and I'll forward your details if you like.

Unveiling NCoverCop

Duncan Bayne (who I have the pleasure of working with at the moment) had the idea of writing a small exe to parse an NCoverResults file and fail a build if the coverage drops below a set threshold. I loved it... and decided to up the ante.


From that seed I have built NCoverCop.

NCoverCop is a custom NAnt task that not only fails your build if your coverage drops, but lifts the threshold each time a new build passes with a higher threshold.

It works by keeping a copy of the best coverage file.

Here's how I use it..

  
              coverageFile="${ncover.output.filename}"
          previousCoverageFile="${ncover.backup.filename}"
          minCoveragePercentage="65"
          autoUpdate="${environment::get-machine-name() == debug.buildbox.name}"
     />
  

• coverageFile is the location of the NCoverResults.xml file you want to compare.


• previousCoverageFile is the file that will be overwitten if a successful build beats the current threshold.


• minCoveragePercentage is used when you don't have a previousCoverageFile yet or the specified percentage is higher than that of the previousCoverageFile.


• autoUpdate can be turned off so the previousCoverageFile doesn't get updated in a passing build.[defaults to on]

Here are a few tips...

We have the previousCoverageFile in a location that is visible on the network and referenced in the build file through it's network address. Coupled with being able to turn autoUpdate off for everyone except the build machine means that you can run ncoverCop locally and see if you are going to break the build before you check in.