NCoverExplorer... v1.3.4

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

It's been a little while since the 1.3.3 release, but NCoverExplorer overload meant I had to take a break to keep some sanity. This release combines some important bugfixes with a small number of new features.

Firstly the new features:

On the toolbar of the NCoverExplorer GUI you will find four new buttons for navigating unvisited lines and classes. These have shortcut keys of 'N'/'P' (or forward/back mouse buttons) for the next/previous unvisited line in the current class. Use 'Ctrl+N'/'Ctrl+P' for next/previous unvisited class in this namespace (or Ctrl + forward/back mouse buttons). Thanks Jamie for the mouse button suggestion, it rocks!

You can use NCoverExplorer.Console.exe to merge and save your NCover coverage.xml files. Coverage exclusions will be applied prior to the save of the consolidated xml file. Wildcards are supported for the coverage filenames, so for instance you can do this:
```
ncoverexplorer.console.exe *.ncover.xml /s:coverage.merged.xml
```
If using the NAnt or MSBuild tasks from the latest NCoverExplorer.Extras.zip, you can add a new attribute "mergeFileName" (NAnt) or "MergeFileName" (MSBuild) containing the filename for the results.
Module level coverage thresholds are now possible using NCoverExplorer.Console.exe, rather than just a single threshold for your project. This is for people wanting more granular control where specific assemblies are deemed unrealistic to attain the same coverage as your overall goal, without seeing "failure" forever on coverage reports.
For NAnt, add this section within your ncoverexplorer task:
```
<ncoverexplorer ...
    <moduleThresholds>
        <moduleThreshold moduleName="MyAssembly1.dll" satisfactoryCoverage="30" />
        <moduleThreshold moduleName="MyAssembly2.dll" satisfactoryCoverage="80" />
    </moduleThresholds>
<ncoverexplorer>
```
For MSBuild, you can add this attribute to the NCoverExplorer task:
```
<NCoverExplorer ...
     ModuleThresholds="MyAssembly1.dll=30;MyAssembly1.dll=80" />
```
For complete examples refer to "example.build" and "example.proj" within the NCoverExplorer.Extras.zip file. If you do not want to use the NAnt/MSBuild tasks then you can use the command line with the /c option for a config file. The syntax is the same as for the NAnt ncoverexplorer task above - see the ConsoleExample.config file in your NCoverExplorer folder.
There is a new code coverage report, which drills down to classes per namespace per module. This is my "favourite" report we use on our CruiseControl.Net build servers. To generate this report the magic number is "4" for your report type attribute in the command line, NAnt and MSBuild tasks.

Updates to the CruiseControl.Net build summary stylesheet, so that it lists all of the assemblies, their coverage and whether they passed/failed as well as the overall project coverage. Note that this stylesheet now has a dependency on a transparent.gif file being placed in your CruiseControl.Net images folder. See the readme in NCoverExplorer.Extras.zip for details.

Added the ability to change source code paths for a loaded coverage file in the NCoverExplorer GUI. Sometimes you will be generating coverage files on another machine (such as a build server) that you want to browse - this feature allows you to override the embedded folder location to find the source code files in.

In terms of bug fixes, the most important that I blogged about recently is a solution for an issue when merging multiple coverage files. There are also fixes for memory leaks and various other minor GUI issues - see the release notes for full details.

As always, please drop me an e-mail through Help->Send Feedback if you have found any bugs or suggestions.

One final point - no doubt most people reading this have heard about Jamie Cansdale "going commercial" with TestDriven.Net. Jamie has been out there upgrading and supporting this great add-in for many years, for which many of us have enjoyed the benefits of "for free". Having had a small taste of what is involved in the last six months with NCoverExplorer you quickly gain an appreciation of just how much of your "life" supporting and enhancing these tools can consume! I wish him all the best in his opportunity to gain a return for those efforts - his continual innovation with TestDriven.Net continues to help fill the many gaps in the Microsoft "out of the box" tools to make for a far more productive development experience.

Download TestDriven.Net 2.0 combined install
Download NCoverExplorer 1.3.4 binaries

Download NCoverExplorer.Extras.zip (CC.Net/NAnt/MSBuild)

Release Notes
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