The NCover Coverage Summary Report

NCover 4 ushered in the live coverage query views and web interface for data analysis.  The full intent was to go paperless, as it were, in the electronic sense.  Not generating static files means that data doesn’t get stale and coverage reports don’t get out of sync.  Live data from a Code Central server would ensure that everyone is seeing the same information all the time.  This is still a very good idea.  We all prefer it when it comes to online banking, so it makes sense we’d prefer it for coverage and code analytics as well.  Still there is a gap.  Sometimes the URI’s for servers simply aren’t portable enough to share.

The point is that we have received some encouragement from the field to bring back the native static reports that were so prolific in NCover 3.  What we have done in v4.1 is to provide a fully self-contained HTML report to summarize an execution.  This HTML file is ideal for archiving with build or testing server artifacts.   You can even email it to a few thousand of your closest friends.  There are no external css, image, or js files to cart around.  In keeping with the “Klingon Gagh is better served live” theme, the report contains local links back into the live data views of NCover at the execution and the module levels.

Coverage Summary Report

Click here to download this sample.

The report shows the coverage and CRAP score trends for the past 25 executions.  Below the main execution summary each module is listed showing these key metrics as well.  The report can be generated for any current or past execution in the data store.  The simplest way to save the report to file is with the following commands:

Generate summary for most recent execution

> ncover report --project="My Project Name"

NCover v4.1.2051.542 x64 (Administrator)
Copyright (c) 2007 - 2012 NCover LLC
Starting Report Creation
Project: My Project Name
Execution: current
File created: C:\My Folder\My Project Name - current.html

Create a report for a specific date or execution

> ncover report --project="My Project" --execution="10/11/12"
NCover v4.1.2051.542 x64 (Administrator)
Copyright (c) 2007 - 2012 NCover LLC
Starting Report Creation
Project: My Project
Execution: 11-10-12
File created: C:\My Folder\My Project - 11-10-12.html

Command Options

>ncover report

Options
--project=VALUE    NCover project name. *REQUIRED*
--execution=VALUE  Specify execution by Caption, Build Id, or Date.
--file=VALUE       File name for export.
--timeout=VALUE    Timeout request after number of seconds

This report can be generated from Code Central and from Desktop.  Do remember that Desktop does not server external pages so the links in a report from Desktop will all be back to 127.0.0.1.   For sharable reports, Code Central is the place to generate your report.  External links are based on the server setting in the ncover.exe.config file for the HTTP authority.  That setting is defined as follows:

By DNS name:

<httpAuthority>myserver.dns.name</httpAuthority>

By external IP:

<httpAuthority>10.4.4.3</httpAuthority>