Separating Test Coverage In Software Processes Using Shared Memory

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2017192878-A1
Application number	US-201615389454-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Dec 23, 2016
Priority date	Dec 31, 2015
Publication date	Jul 6, 2017
Grant date	—

Abstract

A Remote Test Separation (RTS) system comprising an original software product instrumented for testing and a shared memory accessible to the original software product, the shared memory including a plurality of coverage counters. The RTS system further comprising an agent, capable of accessing the shared memory, the agent to read the plurality of coverage counters, the agent to read the plurality of coverage counters at an end of a test, and write coverage data to another memory. The RTS system runs a plurality of tests without interruption, and generates coverage data associated with a plurality of sequential tests and records the associations between lines of code and an associated test.

First claim

We claim:

1 . A Remote Test Separation (RTS) system comprising:
a shared memory accessible to an original software product instrumented for testing, the shared memory including a plurality of coverage counters; an agent, capable of accessing the shared memory, the agent to read the plurality of coverage counters at an end of a test, and write coverage data to another memory; the RTS system designed to run a plurality of tests without starting and stopping the original software product, generate coverage data associated with a plurality of tests, the coverage data recording an association between each of a plurality of software features and an associated test.

2 . The RTS system of claim 1 , wherein the agent resets the plurality of coverage counters at the end of a test.

3 . The RTS system of claim 1 , wherein each coverage counter is associated with a particular software feature in the original software product.

4 . The RTS system of claim 3 , wherein a coverage counter is one bit, indicating whether the software feature was used in the test.

5 . The RTS system of claim 3 , wherein a coverage counter indicates a number of times the software feature was used by the test.

6 . The RTS system of claim 1 , further comprising:
a control interface to provide start and stop commands to the agent.

7 . The RTS system of claim 6 , further comprising:
the control interface providing a unique identifier associated with the test to the agent along with the start command.

8 . The RTS system of claim 7 , wherein the agent associates the unique identifier with the coverage data.

9 . The RTS system of claim 6 , wherein when no start command is received by the agent, the coverage data is associated with a default identifier.

10 . A method of remote test separation comprising:
receiving a start test command for a first test; recording a utilization of a plurality of software features in a plurality of coverage counters; receiving a stop test command; storing data from the plurality of coverage counters and associating the data with the first test; running a plurality of tests without starting and stopping the original software product, to generate coverage data associated with the plurality of tests, and recording an association of the plurality of software features and each test.

11 . The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
resetting the plurality of coverage counters, for a next test.

12 . The method of claim 10 , wherein each coverage counter is associated with a source code feature in the original software product.

13 . The method of claim 12 , wherein a coverage counter is one bit, indicating whether the source code feature was used in the test.

14 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the coverage counter is multiple bits, and indicates a number of times the source code feature was used in the test.

15 . The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
providing start and stop commands to the agent via a control interface.

16 . The method of claim 15 , further comprising:
providing a unique identifier associated with the test along with the start command to the agent.

17 . The method of claim 16 , wherein the agent associates the unique identifier with the coverage data.

18 . The method of claim 10 , wherein when no start command is received by the agent, the coverage data is associated with a default identifier.

19 . A system comprising:
a shared memory accessible to an original software product instrumented for testing, the shared memory including a plurality of coverage counters; a tester to run a plurality of tests on the original software product instrumented for testing, without starting and stopping the original software product; the agent to receive a stop test indication at the end of a test, the agent to access the shared memory and write coverage data from the plurality of coverage counters to an other memory, and reset the coverage counters; the other memory to store coverage data associated with the plurality of tests, the coverage data recording an association between each of a plurality of software features and an associated test.

20 . The system of claim 19 , wherein the coverage counter is selected from:
a one bit counter indicating whether the test used the software feature; and a multi-bit counter indicating a number of times the test used the software feature.

Assignees

• Synopsys Inc

Inventors

• Clark Jonathan
• Kennedy Darren
• François Sylvain
• Rambert Marc
• Mcpeak Scott
• Boshernitsan Marat

Classifications

• G06F11/3688

  for test execution, e.g. scheduling of test suites · CPC title

• G06F11/3684

  for test design, e.g. generating new test cases · CPC title

• G06F11/3676 Primary

  for coverage analysis · CPC title

• G06F11/3664 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F11/3698 Primary

  Environments for analysis, debugging or testing of software · CPC title