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I know what the difference is between line and branch coverage, but what is the difference between code coverage and line coverage? Is the former instruction coverage?

Bartosz Radaczyński
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  • coverage seems to be a computed metric, that takes line and branch coverage into consideration. Can't find the formula though :D – oers Jul 19 '12 at 13:18
  • hence the question. I think it is instruction coverage as one line of java code can have multiple instructions these two are different. Maybe there will an authoritative answer here ;) – Bartosz Radaczyński Jul 19 '12 at 13:26
  • fabrice from sonar roams this tag, so I think will get some info :) – oers Jul 19 '12 at 13:36

2 Answers2

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Coverage is a subtle ;-) mix of the line and the branch coverage.

You can find the formula on our metric description page:

coverage = (CT + CF + LC)/(2*B + EL)
 
where
 
CT - branches that evaluated to "true" at least once
CF - branches that evaluated to "false" at least once
LC - lines covered (lines_to_cover - uncovered_lines)
 
B - total number of branches (2*B = conditions_to_cover)
EL - total number of executable lines (lines_to_cover)
Julian
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Fabrice - SonarSource Team
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4

To expand on the answer, you can only query sonar for these terms:

  1. conditions_to_cover
  2. uncovered_conditions
  3. lines_to_cover
  4. uncovered_lines

And then you can covert to the terms above using these equations:

CT + CF = conditions_to_cover - uncovered_conditions
2*B = conditions_to_cover
LC = lines_to_cover - uncovered_lines
EL = lines_to_cover

You can use the Sonar Drilldown or REST API to get the metric values above:

http://my.sonar.com/drilldown/measures/My-Project-Name?metric=line_coverage 

http://my.sonar.com/api/resources?resource=55555&metrics=ncloc,conditions_to_cover,uncovered_conditions,lines_to_cover,uncovered_lines,coverage,line_coverage,branch_coverage,it_conditions_to_cover,it_uncovered_conditions,it_lines_to_cover,it_uncovered_lines,it_coverage,it_line_coverage,it_branch_coverage,overall_conditions_to_cover,overall_uncovered_conditions,overall_lines_to_cover,overall_uncovered_lines,overall_coverage,overall_line_coverage,overall_branch_coverage

This blog post has additional information: http://sizustech.blogspot.com/2015/10/making-sense-of-sonar-qube-stats-like.html

Scott Izu
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  • It was very unclear that CT + CF in fact conditions_to_cover - uncovered_conditions and 2*B = conditions_to_cover, thanks for highlighting! – Roman Badiornyi Jan 18 '21 at 15:40