A frequently asked question in software testing is: “is that enough testing, or should we do more?” Whether you’re writing unit tests for your programs or finding bugs in closed-source third-party software, knowing what code you have and have not covered is an important piece of information. In this article, we’ll introduce bncov, an open-source tool developed by ForAllSecure (available at on GitHub), and demonstrate how it can be used to answer common questions that arise in software testing.
At its core, bncov is a code coverage analysis tool. While there are several well-known tools that offer visibility into code coverage, we wanted to build a solution that enhanced and/or extended functionality in the following areas: