GCOV2PERL(1)

💅 GCOV2PERL(1) — the glow-up

okay so this is gcov2perl, and it lives in the "User Contributed Perl Documentation" section of your manpages (iykyk, that's where all the good stuff hides) ✨

🎀 NAME

gcov2perl — bestie, it converts gcov files into Devel::Cover databases. that's literally the whole job and it does it slayfully 💖

🌸 VERSION

version 1.50 — she's serving 1.50, no cap 🫶

⭐ SYNOPSIS

 gcov2perl -h -i -v -db database gcov_files

🦋 DESCRIPTION

Convert gcov files to Devel::Cover databases. that's it, that's the vibe 🌈

✨ OPTIONS ✨

here's every flag she supports, and yes you need to know all of them, don't skip 👑

• -db database — picks which database you're gonna use, like choosing your main character database 💅
• -h, -help — shows you the help, a little "hey bestie here's what I do" 🫶
• -i, -info — shows the documentation, aka the full lore drop 📖
• -v, -version — shows the version, for when you gotta know exactly which girl you're dealing with ⭐

🔥 DETAILS

okay so here's the tea on getting coverage out of XS files — you literally cannot skip the first step, they have to be compiled with the right options first, periodt 🙈

in a standard Makefile environment, like the one ExtUtils::MakeMaker creates, you can pull this off with:

 HARNESS_PERL_SWITCHES=-MDevel::Cover make test \
   CCFLAGS=-O0\ -fprofile-arcs\ -ftest-coverage \
   OTHERLDFLAGS=-fprofile-arcs\ -ftest-coverage

ngl if you've already built your object files, it might be necessary to run make clean first 🧹 — or find some other way to make sure they actually get rebuilt with the options gcov requires. no shortcuts bestie 😭

so now the code coverage data has been collected, and that means gcov needs to be run:

 gcov Mylib.xs

this will create one or more gcov files, and those are exactly what you run gcov2perl on:

 gcov2perl Mylib.xs.gcov

and finally, cover should be run as usual with whatever options you need:

 cover

and if you're running everything with standard options, you can do all of this with one single command, iconic behavior honestly 👑

 cover -test

💀 EXIT STATUS

the following exit values are returned:

• 0 — all files converted successfully, we ate and left no crumbs 💖
• >0 — an error occurred. not the vibe. 😭

🔗 SEE ALSO

• Devel::Cover — go read it, she's the icon this whole thing feeds into 🌟

🙈 BUGS

Huh?

(no fr that's what it says, that's the whole bug section, and honestly? relatable.)

👑 LICENCE

Copyright 2001-2025, Paul Johnson (paul@pjcj.net)

This software is free. It is licensed under the same terms as Perl itself.

The latest version of this software should be available from my homepage: https://pjcj.net

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this one shipped with perl v5.42.0 and was dated 2025-06-11 — go forth and get that coverage 🌸💜🦋