[Xen-devel] [PATCH 5/5] gcov: Add documentation for coverage

[Frediano Ziglio <frediano.ziglio@xxxxxxxxxx>]

---
 docs/misc/coverage.markdown |   39 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 39 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 docs/misc/coverage.markdown

diff --git a/docs/misc/coverage.markdown b/docs/misc/coverage.markdown
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+# Coverage support for Xen
+
+Coverare support allow you to get coverage information from Xen execution.
+You can see how many times a line is executed.
+
+The compiler have specific options that enable the collection of these
+information. Every basic block in the code will be instructed by the compiler
+to compute these statistics. It should not be used in production as it slow
+down your hypervisor.
+
+## Enable coverage
+
+Test coverage support can be turned on compiling Xen with coverage option set
+to y.
+
+Something like:
+    cd xen
+    make coverage=y
+
+(or change your `Config.mk` file).
+
+## Extract coverage data
+
+The way GCC and other tools deal with coverage information is to use some files
+created during build phase (.gcno) and some files produced by executing the
+*program* (.gcda). The program in this case is Xen but Xen cannot write files
+so the way you can use coverage from Xen is extract coverage data from Xen and
+then split these information into files.
+
+To extract data you use a simple utility called `xencov`. Mainly `xencore`
+allow you to do 3 operations:
+
+* `xencov read` extract data
+* `xencov reset` reset all coverage counters
+* `xencov read-reset` extract data and reset counters at the same time.
+
+Another utility (**TODO**) is used to split extracted data file into files
+needed by userspace tools.
+
-- 
1.7.9.5


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