Code coverage helps, but it's not enough

Today I talked to two QA Engineers about code coverage and we all agreed that code coverage helps, but is not enough. And by coincidence today I had to fix a bug in tap4j that reminded me the same thing. My cobertura (the coverage tool that I was using at moment) report said that my code was covered by my tests. However there was a bug in the covered code.

If you are curious about the code you can see this issue here. However if you really would like to know more about code coverage, I suggest you to read this fantastic article written by Brian Marick in 99 with the title “How to misuse code coverage”.

I will finish this post now quoting him:

“(…) they (code coverage tools) are only helpful if they’re used to enhance thought, not to replace it”

Cheers

Categories: Blog

Tags: Software Quality