What can be alternative metrics to code coverage?

Question

Code coverage is propably the most controversial code metric. Some say, you have to reach 80% code coverage, other say, it\'s superficial and does not say anything about your te

Answer 1

The value in code coverage is it gives you some idea of what has been exercised by tests. The phrase "code coverage" is often used to mean statement coverage, e.g., "how much of my code (in lines) has been executed", but in fact there are over a hundred varieties of "coverage". These other versions of coverage try to provide a more sophisticated view what it means to exercise code.

For example, condition coverage measures how many of the separate elements of conditional expressions have been exercised. This is different than statement coverage. MC/DC "modified condition/decision coverage" determines whether the elements of all conditional expressions have all been demonstrated to control the outcome of the conditional, and is required by the FAA for aircraft software. Path coverage meaures how many of the possible execution paths through your code have been exercised. This is a better measure than statement coverage, in that paths essentially represent different cases in the code. Which of these measures is best to use depends on how concerned you are about the effectiveness of your tests.

Wikipedia discusses many variations of test coverage reasonably well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_coverage