Bug #34888 for Devel-Cover: POD coverage doesn't work for trivial case

On Fri Apr 11 16:30:50 2008, markhamnr wrote: Show quoted text
My hunch is that this is not a problem with Devel::Cover per se, but is instead a side effect of the interaction between the modules that Devel::Cover relies upon for POD coverage (such as Test::Pod::Coverage) and the fact that the package in which your POD appears is *not* the first package that appears in the file Foo.pm. Customarily, the 'package' declaration is the first statement in a file. In the absence of a 'package' declaration as the first statement, the first package seen in the file is 'package main'. In the file you supplied, Foo.pm, the first statement is 'use strict'. That means your file starts in 'package main'. If, however, you remove the 'use strict' line, then the first package found within Foo.pm is 'package Foo'. And when I then run Devel::Cover on that, I get the POD coverage of Foo.pm you are interested in. ########## $ cat Foo.pm package Foo; =item foo() =cut sub foo { } 1; $ perl -MDevel::Cover foo.pl "$@" Devel::Cover 1.00: Collecting coverage data for branch, condition, pod, statement, subroutine and time. Selecting packages matching: Ignoring packages matching: /Devel/Cover[./] Ignoring packages in: /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.16.0/darwin-2level /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.16.0 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.16.0/darwin-2level /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.16.0 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.14.2 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.14.0 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.12.0 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.1 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl Devel::Cover: Writing coverage database to /Users/jimk/Documents/AAAPerl/Devel-Cover/34888/cover_db/runs/1365774603.670.61098 ---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ File stmt bran cond sub pod time total ---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ Foo.pm 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 100.0 n/a 100.0 foo.pl 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 n/a 100.0 100.0 Total 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 ---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ $ cover -report=text Reading database from /Users/jimk/Documents/AAAPerl/Devel-Cover/34888/cover_db ---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ File stmt bran cond sub pod time total ---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ Foo.pm 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 100.0 n/a 100.0 foo.pl 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 n/a 100.0 100.0 Total 100.0 n/a n/a 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 ---------------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ Run: foo.pl Perl version: 5.16.0 OS: darwin Start: Fri Apr 12 13:50:02 2013 Finish: Fri Apr 12 13:50:02 2013 Foo.pm line err stmt bran cond sub pod time code 1 package Foo; 2 3 =item foo() 4 5 =cut 6 7 1 1 1 sub foo { } 8 9 1; Covered Subroutines ------------------- Subroutine Count Pod Location ---------- ----- --- -------- foo 1 1 Foo.pm:7 foo.pl line err stmt bran cond sub pod time code 1 1 1 74111 use Foo; 1 14 1 130064 2 3 1 271999 Foo::foo; Covered Subroutines ------------------- Subroutine Count Location ---------- ----- -------- BEGIN 1 foo.pl:1 ########### While I cannot rule out the possibility of a Devel::Cover bug here, I can demonstrate that if you code your file in a more standard manner, you get the POD coverage you want. I recommend this ticket be closed. Thank you very much. Jim Keenan

On 2013-04-12 14:52:54, JKEENAN wrote: Show quoted text
... Show quoted text
Jim, I recognise your helpfulness in providing a workaround but I disagree that this ticket should be closed: it clearly demonstrates a shortcoming of Devel::Cover that Pod::Coverage does not exhibit. As you state, Perl modules usually contain the "package" declaration in their first line. However, it's possible to mistype the word "package". Writing "use strict" as the first line makes errors like this easier to spot. I have seen intelligent, experienced colleagues in two separate workplaces do this and have adopted the approach myself. Sadly Devel::Cover does not currently support it. Try writing a module in the style suggested by the reporter. Write a stub Makefile.PL then run "perl Makefile.PL && make manifest". Next run "pod_cover", ensuring you have Pod::Coverage installed first. You will see that Pod::Coverage copes with this approach to writing modules and accuratly reports methods as documented or not. However, if you run that module through a test suite with Devel::Cover, Devel::Cover will report the POD coverage as "n/a". I appreciate your enthusiasm for cleaning up Devel::Cover's bug queue, but please don't recommend closing bug reports without proper investigation. Tom