Task Description

Change the name of make cover to make fullcover and the name of make quickcover to make cover. This suggestion was based on the observation that the scope of tests run in the current cover is much closer to that of the current make fulltest than it is to the current make test. make quickcover, in contrast, runs a set of tests which is actually a subset of those run by the current make test.

Moreover, the current make cover, like make fulltest, takes a long time to run. In order to make coverage analysis less onerous -- particularly for the Google Code-In participants who are focusing on boosting test coverage -- it would be better to have make quickcover be our default coverage tool for PMC and C code.

Hence, we should convert as follows:

make cover     --> make fullcover
# and when that is done ...
make quickover --> make cover

See also http://trac.parrot.org/parrot/ticket/1900

Steps To Complete This Task

1. Create a fork of parrot.git on github.com
2. Perform all the necessary code and/or documentation changes
3. Build parrot and run it's test suite (make fulltest) to verify that things still work
4. Run both make cover and make fullcover, followed by make realclean to make sure all targets are functioning properly.
5. Create a Github pull request (button on the upper right of your fork) to have your changes incorporated into the master repository

Benefits

1. By making make cover run more quickly, developers will be encouraged to write tests so as to boost test coverage of the code.

Requirements

1. GCI participant should be familiar with coverage analysis.
2. GCI participant should be familiar with make targets.
3. Perl 5 module Devel::Cover

Additional Links

• New Parrot Developr Guide
• Parrot Git Workflow
• TT #1900
• Parrot Developer Wiki
• Sending Pull Requests