You cannot select more than 25 topics Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.

391 lines
20 KiB
HTML

<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Invoking Gcov - Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">
<meta name="description" content="Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)">
<meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13">
<link title="Top" rel="start" href="index.html#Top">
<link rel="up" href="Gcov.html#Gcov" title="Gcov">
<link rel="prev" href="Gcov-Intro.html#Gcov-Intro" title="Gcov Intro">
<link rel="next" href="Gcov-and-Optimization.html#Gcov-and-Optimization" title="Gcov and Optimization">
<link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home" title="Texinfo Homepage">
<!--
Copyright (C) 1988-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
Invariant Sections being ``Funding Free Software'', the Front-Cover
Texts being (a) (see below), and with the Back-Cover Texts being (b)
(see below). A copy of the license is included in the section entitled
``GNU Free Documentation License''.
(a) The FSF's Front-Cover Text is:
A GNU Manual
(b) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is:
You have freedom to copy and modify this GNU Manual, like GNU
software. Copies published by the Free Software Foundation raise
funds for GNU development.-->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
<style type="text/css"><!--
pre.display { font-family:inherit }
pre.format { font-family:inherit }
pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller }
pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller }
pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller }
pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller }
span.sc { font-variant:small-caps }
span.roman { font-family:serif; font-weight:normal; }
span.sansserif { font-family:sans-serif; font-weight:normal; }
--></style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="node">
<a name="Invoking-Gcov"></a>
<p>
Next:&nbsp;<a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Gcov-and-Optimization.html#Gcov-and-Optimization">Gcov and Optimization</a>,
Previous:&nbsp;<a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="Gcov-Intro.html#Gcov-Intro">Gcov Intro</a>,
Up:&nbsp;<a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Gcov.html#Gcov">Gcov</a>
<hr>
</div>
<h3 class="section">10.2 Invoking <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp></h3>
<pre class="smallexample"> gcov <span class="roman">[</span><var>options</var><span class="roman">]</span> <var>files</var>
</pre>
<p><samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> accepts the following options:
<!-- man begin OPTIONS -->
<dl>
<dt><code>-h</code><dt><code>--help</code><dd>Display help about using <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> (on the standard output), and
exit without doing any further processing.
<br><dt><code>-v</code><dt><code>--version</code><dd>Display the <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> version number (on the standard output),
and exit without doing any further processing.
<br><dt><code>-a</code><dt><code>--all-blocks</code><dd>Write individual execution counts for every basic block. Normally gcov
outputs execution counts only for the main blocks of a line. With this
option you can determine if blocks within a single line are not being
executed.
<br><dt><code>-b</code><dt><code>--branch-probabilities</code><dd>Write branch frequencies to the output file, and write branch summary
info to the standard output. This option allows you to see how often
each branch in your program was taken. Unconditional branches will not
be shown, unless the <samp><span class="option">-u</span></samp> option is given.
<br><dt><code>-c</code><dt><code>--branch-counts</code><dd>Write branch frequencies as the number of branches taken, rather than
the percentage of branches taken.
<br><dt><code>-n</code><dt><code>--no-output</code><dd>Do not create the <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> output file.
<br><dt><code>-l</code><dt><code>--long-file-names</code><dd>Create long file names for included source files. For example, if the
header file <samp><span class="file">x.h</span></samp> contains code, and was included in the file
<samp><span class="file">a.c</span></samp>, then running <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> on the file <samp><span class="file">a.c</span></samp> will
produce an output file called <samp><span class="file">a.c##x.h.gcov</span></samp> instead of
<samp><span class="file">x.h.gcov</span></samp>. This can be useful if <samp><span class="file">x.h</span></samp> is included in
multiple source files and you want to see the individual
contributions. If you use the &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">-p</span></samp>&rsquo; option, both the including
and included file names will be complete path names.
<br><dt><code>-p</code><dt><code>--preserve-paths</code><dd>Preserve complete path information in the names of generated
<samp><span class="file">.gcov</span></samp> files. Without this option, just the filename component is
used. With this option, all directories are used, with &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">/</span></samp>&rsquo; characters
translated to &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">#</span></samp>&rsquo; characters, <samp><span class="file">.</span></samp> directory components
removed and unremoveable <samp><span class="file">..</span></samp>
components renamed to &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">^</span></samp>&rsquo;. This is useful if sourcefiles are in several
different directories.
<br><dt><code>-r</code><dt><code>--relative-only</code><dd>Only output information about source files with a relative pathname
(after source prefix elision). Absolute paths are usually system
header files and coverage of any inline functions therein is normally
uninteresting.
<br><dt><code>-f</code><dt><code>--function-summaries</code><dd>Output summaries for each function in addition to the file level summary.
<br><dt><code>-o </code><var>directory|file</var><dt><code>--object-directory </code><var>directory</var><dt><code>--object-file </code><var>file</var><dd>Specify either the directory containing the gcov data files, or the
object path name. The <samp><span class="file">.gcno</span></samp>, and
<samp><span class="file">.gcda</span></samp> data files are searched for using this option. If a directory
is specified, the data files are in that directory and named after the
input file name, without its extension. If a file is specified here,
the data files are named after that file, without its extension.
<br><dt><code>-s </code><var>directory</var><dt><code>--source-prefix </code><var>directory</var><dd>A prefix for source file names to remove when generating the output
coverage files. This option is useful when building in a separate
directory, and the pathname to the source directory is not wanted when
determining the output file names. Note that this prefix detection is
applied before determining whether the source file is absolute.
<br><dt><code>-u</code><dt><code>--unconditional-branches</code><dd>When branch probabilities are given, include those of unconditional branches.
Unconditional branches are normally not interesting.
<br><dt><code>-d</code><dt><code>--display-progress</code><dd>Display the progress on the standard output.
<br><dt><code>-i</code><dt><code>--intermediate-format</code><dd>Output gcov file in an easy-to-parse intermediate text format that can
be used by <samp><span class="command">lcov</span></samp> or other tools. The output is a single
<samp><span class="file">.gcov</span></samp> file per <samp><span class="file">.gcda</span></samp> file. No source code is required.
<p>The format of the intermediate <samp><span class="file">.gcov</span></samp> file is plain text with
one entry per line
<pre class="smallexample"> file:<var>source_file_name</var>
function:<var>line_number</var>,<var>execution_count</var>,<var>function_name</var>
lcount:<var>line number</var>,<var>execution_count</var>
branch:<var>line_number</var>,<var>branch_coverage_type</var>
Where the <var>branch_coverage_type</var> is
notexec (Branch not executed)
taken (Branch executed and taken)
nottaken (Branch executed, but not taken)
There can be multiple <var>file</var> entries in an intermediate gcov
file. All entries following a <var>file</var> pertain to that source file
until the next <var>file</var> entry.
</pre>
<p>Here is a sample when <samp><span class="option">-i</span></samp> is used in conjunction with <samp><span class="option">-b</span></samp> option:
<pre class="smallexample"> file:array.cc
function:11,1,_Z3sumRKSt6vectorIPiSaIS0_EE
function:22,1,main
lcount:11,1
lcount:12,1
lcount:14,1
branch:14,taken
lcount:26,1
branch:28,nottaken
</pre>
<br><dt><code>-m</code><dt><code>--demangled-names</code><dd>Display demangled function names in output. The default is to show
mangled function names.
</dl>
<p><samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> should be run with the current directory the same as that
when you invoked the compiler. Otherwise it will not be able to locate
the source files. <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> produces files called
<samp><var>mangledname</var><span class="file">.gcov</span></samp> in the current directory. These contain
the coverage information of the source file they correspond to.
One <samp><span class="file">.gcov</span></samp> file is produced for each source (or header) file
containing code,
which was compiled to produce the data files. The <var>mangledname</var> part
of the output file name is usually simply the source file name, but can
be something more complicated if the &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">-l</span></samp>&rsquo; or &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">-p</span></samp>&rsquo; options are
given. Refer to those options for details.
<p>If you invoke <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> with multiple input files, the
contributions from each input file are summed. Typically you would
invoke it with the same list of files as the final link of your executable.
<p>The <samp><span class="file">.gcov</span></samp> files contain the &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">:</span></samp>&rsquo; separated fields along with
program source code. The format is
<pre class="smallexample"> <var>execution_count</var>:<var>line_number</var>:<var>source line text</var>
</pre>
<p>Additional block information may succeed each line, when requested by
command line option. The <var>execution_count</var> is &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">-</span></samp>&rsquo; for lines
containing no code. Unexecuted lines are marked &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">#####</span></samp>&rsquo; or
&lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">====</span></samp>&rsquo;, depending on whether they are reachable by
non-exceptional paths or only exceptional paths such as C++ exception
handlers, respectively.
<p>Some lines of information at the start have <var>line_number</var> of zero.
These preamble lines are of the form
<pre class="smallexample"> -:0:<var>tag</var>:<var>value</var>
</pre>
<p>The ordering and number of these preamble lines will be augmented as
<samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> development progresses &mdash; do not rely on them remaining
unchanged. Use <var>tag</var> to locate a particular preamble line.
<p>The additional block information is of the form
<pre class="smallexample"> <var>tag</var> <var>information</var>
</pre>
<p>The <var>information</var> is human readable, but designed to be simple
enough for machine parsing too.
<p>When printing percentages, 0% and 100% are only printed when the values
are <em>exactly</em> 0% and 100% respectively. Other values which would
conventionally be rounded to 0% or 100% are instead printed as the
nearest non-boundary value.
<p>When using <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp>, you must first compile your program with two
special GCC options: &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage</span></samp>&rsquo;.
This tells the compiler to generate additional information needed by
gcov (basically a flow graph of the program) and also includes
additional code in the object files for generating the extra profiling
information needed by gcov. These additional files are placed in the
directory where the object file is located.
<p>Running the program will cause profile output to be generated. For each
source file compiled with <samp><span class="option">-fprofile-arcs</span></samp>, an accompanying
<samp><span class="file">.gcda</span></samp> file will be placed in the object file directory.
<p>Running <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> with your program's source file names as arguments
will now produce a listing of the code along with frequency of execution
for each line. For example, if your program is called <samp><span class="file">tmp.c</span></samp>, this
is what you see when you use the basic <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp> facility:
<pre class="smallexample"> $ gcc -fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage tmp.c
$ a.out
$ gcov tmp.c
90.00% of 10 source lines executed in file tmp.c
Creating tmp.c.gcov.
</pre>
<p>The file <samp><span class="file">tmp.c.gcov</span></samp> contains output from <samp><span class="command">gcov</span></samp>.
Here is a sample:
<pre class="smallexample"> -: 0:Source:tmp.c
-: 0:Graph:tmp.gcno
-: 0:Data:tmp.gcda
-: 0:Runs:1
-: 0:Programs:1
-: 1:#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
-: 2:
-: 3:int main (void)
1: 4:{
1: 5: int i, total;
-: 6:
1: 7: total = 0;
-: 8:
11: 9: for (i = 0; i &lt; 10; i++)
10: 10: total += i;
-: 11:
1: 12: if (total != 45)
#####: 13: printf ("Failure\n");
-: 14: else
1: 15: printf ("Success\n");
1: 16: return 0;
-: 17:}
</pre>
<p>When you use the <samp><span class="option">-a</span></samp> option, you will get individual block
counts, and the output looks like this:
<pre class="smallexample"> -: 0:Source:tmp.c
-: 0:Graph:tmp.gcno
-: 0:Data:tmp.gcda
-: 0:Runs:1
-: 0:Programs:1
-: 1:#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
-: 2:
-: 3:int main (void)
1: 4:{
1: 4-block 0
1: 5: int i, total;
-: 6:
1: 7: total = 0;
-: 8:
11: 9: for (i = 0; i &lt; 10; i++)
11: 9-block 0
10: 10: total += i;
10: 10-block 0
-: 11:
1: 12: if (total != 45)
1: 12-block 0
#####: 13: printf ("Failure\n");
$$$$$: 13-block 0
-: 14: else
1: 15: printf ("Success\n");
1: 15-block 0
1: 16: return 0;
1: 16-block 0
-: 17:}
</pre>
<p>In this mode, each basic block is only shown on one line &ndash; the last
line of the block. A multi-line block will only contribute to the
execution count of that last line, and other lines will not be shown
to contain code, unless previous blocks end on those lines.
The total execution count of a line is shown and subsequent lines show
the execution counts for individual blocks that end on that line. After each
block, the branch and call counts of the block will be shown, if the
<samp><span class="option">-b</span></samp> option is given.
<p>Because of the way GCC instruments calls, a call count can be shown
after a line with no individual blocks.
As you can see, line 13 contains a basic block that was not executed.
<p>When you use the <samp><span class="option">-b</span></samp> option, your output looks like this:
<pre class="smallexample"> $ gcov -b tmp.c
90.00% of 10 source lines executed in file tmp.c
80.00% of 5 branches executed in file tmp.c
80.00% of 5 branches taken at least once in file tmp.c
50.00% of 2 calls executed in file tmp.c
Creating tmp.c.gcov.
</pre>
<p>Here is a sample of a resulting <samp><span class="file">tmp.c.gcov</span></samp> file:
<pre class="smallexample"> -: 0:Source:tmp.c
-: 0:Graph:tmp.gcno
-: 0:Data:tmp.gcda
-: 0:Runs:1
-: 0:Programs:1
-: 1:#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
-: 2:
-: 3:int main (void)
function main called 1 returned 1 blocks executed 75%
1: 4:{
1: 5: int i, total;
-: 6:
1: 7: total = 0;
-: 8:
11: 9: for (i = 0; i &lt; 10; i++)
branch 0 taken 91% (fallthrough)
branch 1 taken 9%
10: 10: total += i;
-: 11:
1: 12: if (total != 45)
branch 0 taken 0% (fallthrough)
branch 1 taken 100%
#####: 13: printf ("Failure\n");
call 0 never executed
-: 14: else
1: 15: printf ("Success\n");
call 0 called 1 returned 100%
1: 16: return 0;
-: 17:}
</pre>
<p>For each function, a line is printed showing how many times the function
is called, how many times it returns and what percentage of the
function's blocks were executed.
<p>For each basic block, a line is printed after the last line of the basic
block describing the branch or call that ends the basic block. There can
be multiple branches and calls listed for a single source line if there
are multiple basic blocks that end on that line. In this case, the
branches and calls are each given a number. There is no simple way to map
these branches and calls back to source constructs. In general, though,
the lowest numbered branch or call will correspond to the leftmost construct
on the source line.
<p>For a branch, if it was executed at least once, then a percentage
indicating the number of times the branch was taken divided by the
number of times the branch was executed will be printed. Otherwise, the
message &ldquo;never executed&rdquo; is printed.
<p>For a call, if it was executed at least once, then a percentage
indicating the number of times the call returned divided by the number
of times the call was executed will be printed. This will usually be
100%, but may be less for functions that call <code>exit</code> or <code>longjmp</code>,
and thus may not return every time they are called.
<p>The execution counts are cumulative. If the example program were
executed again without removing the <samp><span class="file">.gcda</span></samp> file, the count for the
number of times each line in the source was executed would be added to
the results of the previous run(s). This is potentially useful in
several ways. For example, it could be used to accumulate data over a
number of program runs as part of a test verification suite, or to
provide more accurate long-term information over a large number of
program runs.
<p>The data in the <samp><span class="file">.gcda</span></samp> files is saved immediately before the program
exits. For each source file compiled with <samp><span class="option">-fprofile-arcs</span></samp>, the
profiling code first attempts to read in an existing <samp><span class="file">.gcda</span></samp> file; if
the file doesn't match the executable (differing number of basic block
counts) it will ignore the contents of the file. It then adds in the
new execution counts and finally writes the data to the file.
</body></html>