altcover 8.7.3

dotnet add package altcover --version 8.7.3
NuGet\Install-Package altcover -Version 8.7.3
This command is intended to be used within the Package Manager Console in Visual Studio, as it uses the NuGet module's version of Install-Package.
<PackageReference Include="altcover" Version="8.7.3" />
For projects that support PackageReference, copy this XML node into the project file to reference the package.
paket add altcover --version 8.7.3
#r "nuget: altcover, 8.7.3"
#r directive can be used in F# Interactive and Polyglot Notebooks. Copy this into the interactive tool or source code of the script to reference the package.
// Install altcover as a Cake Addin
#addin nuget:?package=altcover&version=8.7.3

// Install altcover as a Cake Tool
#tool nuget:?package=altcover&version=8.7.3

altcover

Instrumenting coverage tool for .net (framework 2.0+ and core) and Mono assemblies, reimplemented and extended almost beyond recognition from dot-net-coverage, plus a set of related utilities for processing the results from this and from other programs producing similar output formats.

Usage

See the Wiki page for full details

I really want coverage for my .net core unit test project right now

Install into your test project

dotnet add package AltCover

and run

dotnet test /p:AltCover=true

The OpenCover format output will be in file coverage.xml in the project directory

What's in the box?

For Mono, .net framework and .net core, except as noted

  • AltCover, a command-line tool for recording code coverage (net472 and .netcoreapp2.0)
  • MSBuild tasks to drive the tool, including dotnet test integration
  • A PowerShell module for Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell Core 6+ containing a cmdlet that drives the tool, and other cmdlets for manipulating coverage reports
  • A coverage visualizer tool (net472) -- for .net framework, needs GTK# v2.12.xx installed separately Visualizer screenshot

Why altcover?

As the name suggests, it's an alternative coverage approach. Rather than working by hooking the .net profiling API at run-time, it works by weaving the same sort of extra IL into the assemblies of interest ahead of execution. This means that it should work pretty much everywhere, whatever your platform, so long as the executing process has write access to the results file. You can even mix-and-match between platforms used to instrument and those under test.

In particular, while instrumenting .net core assemblies "just works" with this approach, it also supports Mono, as long as suitable .mdb (or .pdb, in recent versions) symbols are available. One major limitation here is that the .mdb format only stores the start location in the source of any code sequence point, and not the end; consequently any nicely coloured reports that take that information into account may show a bit strangely.

Why altcover? -- the back-story of why it was ever a thing

Back in 2010, the new .net version finally removed the deprecated profiling APIs that the free NCover 1.5.x series relied upon. The first version of AltCover was written to both fill a gap in functionality, and to give me an excuse for a ground-up F# project to work on. As such, it saw real production use for about a year and a half, until OpenCover reached a point where it could be used for .net4/x64 work (and I could find time to adapt everything downstream that consumed NCover format input).

Fast forwards to autumn 2017, and I get the chance to dust the project off, with the intention of saying that it worked on Mono, too -- and realise that it's déja vu all over again, because .net core didn't yet have profiler based coverage tools either, and the same approach would work there as well.

Continuous Integration

Build GitHub Build statusBuild history
Test coverage Coveralls Coverage Status

Possible retirement/obsolescence of support

tl;dr -- legacy framework/Mono support is not going away any time soon.

As net472 can consume netstandard2.0 libraries (everything but the recorder), and .net core 2+ can consume net20 libraries (the recorder), legacy framework/Mono support continues until such a time as it is no longer possible to retain those API levels.

Other NuGet Packages in this suite

Product Compatible and additional computed target framework versions.
.NET net5.0 was computed.  net5.0-windows was computed.  net6.0 was computed.  net6.0-android was computed.  net6.0-ios was computed.  net6.0-maccatalyst was computed.  net6.0-macos was computed.  net6.0-tvos was computed.  net6.0-windows was computed.  net7.0 was computed.  net7.0-android was computed.  net7.0-ios was computed.  net7.0-maccatalyst was computed.  net7.0-macos was computed.  net7.0-tvos was computed.  net7.0-windows was computed.  net8.0 was computed.  net8.0-android was computed.  net8.0-browser was computed.  net8.0-ios was computed.  net8.0-maccatalyst was computed.  net8.0-macos was computed.  net8.0-tvos was computed.  net8.0-windows was computed. 
.NET Core netcoreapp2.0 was computed.  netcoreapp2.1 was computed.  netcoreapp2.2 was computed.  netcoreapp3.0 was computed.  netcoreapp3.1 was computed. 
.NET Standard netstandard2.0 is compatible.  netstandard2.1 was computed. 
.NET Framework net20 is compatible.  net35 was computed.  net40 was computed.  net403 was computed.  net45 was computed.  net451 was computed.  net452 was computed.  net46 was computed.  net461 was computed.  net462 was computed.  net463 was computed.  net47 was computed.  net471 was computed.  net472 was computed.  net48 was computed.  net481 was computed. 
MonoAndroid monoandroid was computed. 
MonoMac monomac was computed. 
MonoTouch monotouch was computed. 
Tizen tizen40 was computed.  tizen60 was computed. 
Xamarin.iOS xamarinios was computed. 
Xamarin.Mac xamarinmac was computed. 
Xamarin.TVOS xamarintvos was computed. 
Xamarin.WatchOS xamarinwatchos was computed. 
Compatible target framework(s)
Included target framework(s) (in package)
Learn more about Target Frameworks and .NET Standard.

This package has no dependencies.

NuGet packages

This package is not used by any NuGet packages.

GitHub repositories (20)

Showing the top 5 popular GitHub repositories that depend on altcover:

Repository Stars
jstedfast/MailKit
A cross-platform .NET library for IMAP, POP3, and SMTP.
praeclarum/sqlite-net
Simple, powerful, cross-platform SQLite client and ORM for .NET
ardalis/GuardClauses
A simple package with guard clause extensions.
danielpalme/ReportGenerator
ReportGenerator converts coverage reports generated by coverlet, OpenCover, dotCover, Visual Studio, NCover, Cobertura, JaCoCo, Clover, gcov or lcov into human readable reports in various formats.
jstedfast/MimeKit
A .NET MIME creation and parser library with support for S/MIME, PGP, DKIM, TNEF and Unix mbox spools.
Version Downloads Last updated
8.7.3 770 3/14/2024
8.6.125 33,976 1/4/2024
8.6.95 21,472 11/14/2023
8.6.68 94,222 7/10/2023
8.6.61 24,100 6/6/2023
8.6.45 68,203 3/21/2023
8.6.40 9,816 3/16/2023
8.6.14 103,438 1/1/2023
8.5.842 11,666 12/25/2022
8.5.841 27,887 11/19/2022
8.4.840 49,079 10/17/2022
8.3.839 23,301 9/13/2022

This build from https://github.com/SteveGilham/altcover/tree/c273b0aa4607e96f41f2b0a2dc921c4009d21569

Q. Never mind the fluff -- how do I get started?
A. Start with the Quick Start guide : https://github.com/SteveGilham/altcover/wiki/QuickStart-Guide and
read the FAQ : https://github.com/SteveGilham/altcover/wiki/FAQ

8.7.3 (Habu series release 26)
• [Enhancement] Discussion 202 : More careful tidying of temporary .runsettings files, fixing long-standing errors of both commission and omission.
• [Enhancement] Discussion 199 : Add /p:AltCoverOutputRoot=[path] and associated APIs for dotnet test command line creation.  The [path] is a directory to be used instead of $(TargetDir) for the relative placing of the instrumented or saved files.  The use-case here is when $(TargetDir) is close to MAX_PATH and the generated sub-folders would overflow that limit._

8.6.125 (Habu series release 25)
• [BUGFIX] Issue 197 : Update [InternalsVisibleTo] references during instrumentation.  Finally fixing an issue that's been there since 2010!

8.6.95 (Habu series release 24)
• Built with and supports net8.0 release
• Other dependency updates.
• Minor housekeeping changes, but no actual new features.

8.6.68 (Habu series release 23)
• Omit anonymous types from coverage, in the same way as other compiler generated code (auto-properties, equality and related operations on F# distributed unions, etc.)
• Supports net8.0 preview 5

8.6.61 (Habu series release 22)
• [BUGFIX] prevent possible "The lists had different lengths." exception in the collect phase (Issue 181)
• Removes some obsolete code from the dotnet test integration
• Drop support for Fake 5.23.x
• Supports net8.0 preview 4
• Updated to Cecil 11.5, removing the need for workrounds for issues noted at 11.4
• Other dependency updates.

8.6.48 (Habu series release 21a)
• [BUGFIX] Correctly package the visualizer for net5.0, as well as building it against the later platform

8.6.45 (Habu series release 21)
• [BUGFIX] Issue #179 - Improve and strengthen the heuristic for locating dependent assemblies, prossibly slightly speeding the look-up in the process by eliminating potentially duplicated effort.

8.6.40 (Habu series release 20)
• [BUGFIX] Issue #178 - possible NRE when instrumenting woven code e.g. using Fody
• [AvaloniaVisualizer] Now requires net5.0 or later
• Supports Fake 6.0.0.  This is probably the last release that will support earlier versions, as 5.23.1 is almost 6 months old.
• Supports net8.0 previews 1,2 (so far, no nasty surprises like with the 7.0.100 release)

8.6.14 (Habu series release 19)
• [GTKVisualizer] Fix an off-by-one crash for coverlet generated files
• [AvaloniaVisualizer] Fix possible crash launching the About dialog
• [Visualizer] Display coverage percentages against nodes of the tree (known issue that the synthetic F# module nodes are not thus decorated)
• [Visualizer] Improve handling of larger coverage files by deferring more processing until the tree model is actually expanded.
• [API] Types Options.CLI, Options.Logging, Options.Prepare and Options.Collect in namespace AltCover; concrete implementations of the ICLIOptions, ILoggingOptions and IPrepareOptions and ICollectOptions respectively, with getter and setter for each property.  Default values for the latter two are as per the corresponding Primitive record types.
• [API] Also on the AltCover.Fake package in the AltCoverFake.DotNet.Testing namespace (except Options.Logging which is not useful in that context)

8.5.842 (Habu series release 18)
• [VISUALIZER] As the relevant Avalonia issue is long resolved, move to having separate dialog boxes for the Avalonia Visualizer's "About" and message box, as in the GTK# version.
• ref struct types have an autogenerated [Obsolete] attribute with a standard comment - detect and ignore such attributes.  See https://turnerj.com/blog/ref-structs-are-technically-obsolete for details.

8.5.841 (Habu series release 17)
• To support Cake 3.0, move the Cake API assembly from AltCover.Api to a new package AltCover.Cake; this contains libraries built against Cake 2.0.0 at netcoreapp3.1 as well as the old ones built against Cake 1.0.0 at netstandard2.0 (present but in practice obsolete).
• Following Fake.build's policy of deprecating releases older then 6 month, drop support for versions before 5.23
• [BREAKING] Rename AltCover.Cake.DotNet.DotNetCoreTest to AltCover.Cake.DotNet.DotNetTest (even in the obsolete 1.0.0 build) to match the changes in the Cake APIs (and consequent chage to the test setting type in the argument list).  Similarly, in the version >= 2.0.0 build, the type AltCover.Cake.DotNet is now a [CakeAliasCategory("DotNet")] rather than [CakeAliasCategory("DotNetCore")]
• [API] New DotNet APIs for Fake support - ToTestPropertiesList method to emit a list of (name,value) pairs to allow customised property passing to dotnet test in the wake of the v7.0.100 regression.
• [API] Additionally ImportModuleProperties and GetVersionProperties values that are additonal lists of (name,value) pairs to append as needed.

For previous releases (8.4.840 and earlier) go here -- https://github.com/SteveGilham/altcover/blob/master/ReleaseNotes%20-%20Previously.md