debian_python-coverage/TODO.txt

Coverage.py TODO

Key:
    * Heading
    - Not done yet.
    + Done.
    x Not going to do.

* 4.0

- What defaults should change?
    x --source = . ?
    x --branch = True ?

- Remove 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 limitations
    + set, sorted, reversed, rpartition
    + generator expressions
    + decorators
    + collections.defaultdict
    + .startswith((,))
    + "with" statements
    - .format() ?
    + try/except/finally
    + with assertRaises
    + addCleanup instead of tearDown
    + exec statement can look like a function in py2 (since when?)
    - runpy ?
    + we can use "except ExcClass as e:"

- Plugins
    + Clean up
    + implement plugin support in CTracer
    + remove plugin support from PyTracer
    x add services:
        - filelocator
        - warning
    - dynamic_source_filename: return should be a canonical path
        - update the omit test to use "quux*" instead of "*quux*"
    + docs
+ Make reports use filenames, not module names
- documentation
    - test helpers
    + cov.config["run:branch"] api (well, coverage.get_option etc)
    + "added in 4.0"
    - tweaks to theme?
    - Plugins!
        Once per process
        Once per file
            - create a file tracer
            - call its has_dynamic_source_file()
        Once per call
        Once per line
- build process
    - don't publish to nedbat.com any more (but still need the sample html reports)
        + don't need .px tooling
        - write a new nedbat.com/code/coverage page.
    - all doc links should point to rtfd
+ Remove code only run on <2.6
+ Change data file to json
+ Create data api
+ gevent, etc.
+ Remove the old command-line syntax
    + A pain, b/c of the structure of the tests.
    + BTW: make an easier way to write those tests.

- tests
    - test the kit has the right contents
    - test the kit installs the right stuff


* --source stuff:
    + warn if a package is never found.
    + warn if no data was collected
    - tie --source into reporting

* Soon

+ Better omit handling that ignores files during measurement.
    - Deal with ~ in specified paths correctly.
+ while TRUE claims to be partial.
    + A way to mark lines as partial branches, with a regex?
        + Default to "while True:", "while 1:"
+ HTML keyboard short cuts


* 3.2

+ Some kind of indication in the HTML where yellow lines aren't going.
- Profile the reporting code: it's REALLY slow.
    - parser is doing some redundant work.
+ Analysis class should do rolling up of stats also (actually Numbers)
+ Update docs for --branch.
x self.coverage.data.has_arcs is ugly.
+ Branches that never jump to nocover lines shouldn't be marked as partial.
    (see top of test_cogapp for examples)
+ Maybe turning off yellow lines should make those lines green?
+ A missing branch to leave the function shows an annotation of -1. Now "exit".
+ XML report needs to get branch information.
+ Add branch info to "coverage debug data"
+ Polish up the help, and double-check the docs.


* Speed

+ C extension collector
- bitvector in trace extension.
- Ignore certain modules
+ Record linenos rather than (file,lineno) pairs in tracer.
x Tricky swapping of collector like figleaf, pycov, et al. (Don't need to do
    this with C collector).
- Seems like there should be a faster way to manage all the line number sets in
    CodeParser.raw_parse.
- If tracing, canonical_filename_cache overlaps with should_trace_cache.  Skip
    canonical_filename_cache. Maybe it isn't even worth it...
- Would pre-allocating line number integers make the C tracer faster? It would
    use less memory.


* Accuracy

- Record magic number of module to ensure code hasn't changed
- Record version of coverage data file, so we can update what's stored there.
- Record options in coverage data file, so multiple runs are certain to make
    sense together.
- Do I still need the lines in annotate_file that deal specially with "else"?


* Power

+ Branch coverage
    Titus' idea:
        1: if a:
        2:     b = 2
        3: c = 3
    if the coverage data shows 1,2,3, it was if-then.  if it's 1,3, then the
    missing else was executed.
+ API for getting coverage data.
- Instruction tracing instead of line tracing.
- Path tracing (how does this even work?)
- Count execution of lines
- Track callers of functions (ala std module trace)
- Method/Class/Module coverage reporting.
- .coverage files that can be kept separate, rather than accumulated.
- test/coverage map: http://rbtcollins.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/back-from-hiatus/
    - Similar to figleaf's sections.


* Convenience

- Command line modules should also be directories, meaning all the modules in that
    directory.
- Why can't a morf also be a string, the name of a module?
- ignore by module as well as file?
+ Use a .coveragerc file to control coverage.py without the programmatic API.
- Add a --data switch to explicitly control the data file on the command line.
x Why can't you specify execute (-x) and report (-r) in the same invocation?
    Maybe just because -x needs the rest of the command line?
+ Support 2.3 - 3.1!
    http://pythonology.blogspot.com/2009/02/making-code-run-on-python-20-through-30.html
    http://www.rfk.id.au/blog/entry/preparing-pyenchant-for-python-3
    http://pydev.blogspot.com/2008/11/making-code-work-in-python-2-and-3.html
    + Explicitly set pickle protocol to 2.
- An inference mode that marks lines as executed if they "must have been" executed:
    class definitions, etc, when coverage is started after the class is defined.
- Different categories of exclude pragma? So you can enable and disable them
    from the command line, to reconsider exclusions.
+ Reporting on files never touched by coverage.py (package completeness)
- A setup.py command? http://jeetworks.org/node/50
- Deltas: indicate the change in coverage percentage from the last run.
+ Show lines missing rather than lines run in the reporting, since that's what
  you need to focus on.


* Beauty

+ HTML report
    - Colored bars indicating coverage per file.
    - Package navigation.
    - Rolled-up statistics.
    - Some way to focus in on red and yellow
        - Show only lines near highlights?
        + Jump to next highlight?
            + Keyboard navigation: j and k.
    - Cookie for changes to pyfile.html state.
    + Clickable column headers on the index page.
    + Syntax coloring in HTML report.
    + Dynamic effects in HTML report.
    + Footer in reports pointing to coverage.py home page.
    + Baseline grid for linenumber font.
    + Separate out css and HTML.
    + Does it work right with utf-8 source files? http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/
    - Use vim modeline to determine tab width: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#modeline


* Community

+ New docs, rather than pointing to Gareth's
    + Min python version is 2.3.
    - Three phases of work:
        - Collection
        - Analysis
        - Reporting
    - Distinction between:
        - ignore (files not to collect)
        - exclude (lines not to report as missed)
        - omit (files not to report)
    - Changes from coverage.py 2.x:
        - Bare "except:" lines now count as executable code.
        - Double function decorators: all decorator lines count as executable code.
    x Document the .coverage file format.
    + HTML reporting.
        - Much more detail about what's in the report.
    - References between pages are off:
        - They have <em> tags around them.
        - They use #anchors that don't survive the px->html conversion.
+ Be sure --help text is complete (-i is missing).
+ Host the project somewhere with a real bug tracker: bitbucket.org
+ Point discussion to TIP
- PEP 8 compliance?


* Programmability

+ Don't use sys.exit in CoverageScript.
+ Remove singleton
    + Initialization of instance variables in the class.


* Installation

x How will coverage.py package install over coverage.py module?
x pip can't install it: it reads the coverage.py html page, and finds the kit link,
    but then can't handle the root-relative link.


* Modernization

+ Decide on minimum supported version
    + 2.3
    + Get rid of the basestring protection
    + Use enumerate
    + Use sets instead of dicts
+ Switch from getopt to optparse.
+ Get rid of the recursive nonsense.
+ Docstrings.
+ Remove huge document-style comments.
- Better names:
    + self.cache -> self.cache_filename -> CoverageData.filename
    + self.usecache -> CoverageData.use_file
- More classes:
    - Module munging
    + Coverage data files
+ Why are some imports at the top of the file, and some in functions?
+ Get rid of sys.exitfunc use.
+ True and False (with no backward adaptation: the constants are new in 2.2.1)
+ Get rid of compiler module
    + In analyzing code
    + In test_coverage.py
+ Style:
    + lineno
    + filename


* Correctness

- What does -p (parallel mode) mean with -e (erase data)?


* Tests

+ Switch to a real test runner, like nose.
+ Test both the C trace function and the Python trace function.
+ parser.py has no direct tests.
+ Tests about the .coverage file.
+ Tests about the --long-form of arguments.
+ Tests about overriding the .coverage filename.
- Tests about parallel mode.
+ Tests about assigning a multi-line string.
- Tests about tricky docstrings.
+ Coverage test coverage.py!
- Tests that tracing stops after calling stop()
- More intensive thread testing.
x Tests about the "import __main__" in cmdline.py
+ What happens if the -x script raises an exception?
- Test that the kit has all the proper contents.