gcov(1) - NetBSD Manual Pages

GCOV(1)                 NetBSD General Commands Manual                 GCOV(1)


NAME

     gcov -- display basic block profile / coverage data


SYNOPSIS

     gcov [-bflnv] [-o dir] source.c


DESCRIPTION

     The C compiler gcc(1) supports the command line options -fprofile-arcs
     and -ftest-coverage.  These options cause the compiler to insert instru-
     mentation into the object files it generates which measure how often each
     basic block is executed; in addition, when compiling a file named (for
     instance) source.c, in addition to generating the object file source.o,
     the compiler also generates source.bb and source.bbg; these files
     describe the control flow graph of the program.

     When executed, the program will update execution counts for each basic
     block in a file named source.da.  This file will be created if it doesn't
     exist.  If the program is run multiple times, the execution counts will
     reflect all runs of the program since the file was first created.  The
     gcov(1) program can then be used to display the collected data in human-
     readable form.  When the command
           gcov source.c
     is run, a copy of the source file with execution counts prepended to each
     line is created in source.c.gcov, and some summary statistics are printed
     to standard output.

     The following options are available:

     -b      Include information about branch frequencies in the output file
             and on standard output.

     -f      Output function-level summaries in addition to a summary for the
             whole source file.

     -l      Create longer unambiguous names when executable code in the
             object comes from an included header file rather than the main
             file.  If, for example, source.c includes one or more header
             files header.h which include instrumented code, the report for
             this code will be put in source.c.header.h.gcov instead of the
             default header.h.gcov.

     -n      Do not create output files (but still display summaries to stan-
             dard output).

     -v      Display the version number of gcov(1)

     -o dir  Find .bb, .bbg, and .da files in the directory dir.


SEE ALSO

     gcc(1), gprof(1)
     The `gcc' entry in info(1)


HISTORY

     gcov appeared in NetBSD 1.4.

NetBSD 3.0                      March 13, 1999                      NetBSD 3.0