Significant Flexcover changes from 0.11 to 0.50

This document summarizes significant changes from release 0.11 to 0.50
in Flexcover, broken down into their major areas.


Branch coverage

Flexcover now calculates both branch coverage (also called "path
coverage") and line coverage for instrumented programs, and displays
both types of coverage in the source view.

Branch coverage helps you determine whether every possible conditional
path through the code been executed, by counting the number of times
that each condition affecting program flow or expression evaluation
has yielded true or false.  This is a better metric than line
coverage, because it can tell you whether you have exercised all the
different ways a program can execute, not just whether each line of
the program has run individually.  Branch coverage can even pinpoint
specific conditional expressions within a line of source.


Greatly simplified build/install process

The confusing Ant build framework that used to ship with Flexcover is
no longer needed.  That framework still exists and is checked into the
source tree, but is only used by developers on the Flexcover project.

The new approach is simpler: first, you create a custom Flex SDK by
copying Flexcover's modifications on top of a fresh SDK from Adobe.
After that, instrumented applications may be built by simply
configuring your project's current development tools to use this
custom SDK.  No compiler switches or options are needed, and you can
use whatever tools you like to build your instrumented applications,
including Flex Builder.


CoverageViewer is now a shrink-wrapped AIR application

The CoverageViewer is no longer launched from Ant: it is now a
regular, installable AIR application.  It registers itself for the CVM
and CVR (see below) file types, which makes it very easy to launch by
double-clicking any instrumented application's .cvm file in Flex
Builder or on your OS desktop, or any saved coverage report.


Source code coverage viewing improvements

The source view now opens in the main CoverageViewer window, which is
more convenient in most cases.  The source view shows branch coverage
as well as line coverage, using colored superscript to display inline
counts for true and false conditions in the source code.

Selecting a class immediately displays the class's source code, while
selecting a function name will scroll directly to that function within
its containing class.

A new "quick locator" next to the source view's vertical scroll bar
makes it easy to see at a glance where the uncovered portions of a
source file are, and to scroll to those areas immediately.


"Uncovered" column in main coverage views

A new column in the main view shows the number of branches or lines
that have not received any coverage so far.  Sorting by this column is
a very convenient way to see which parts of your program need the most
attention.


ICoverageAgent interface supports multiple recording approaches

The coverage recording runtime for instrumented applications is no
longer limited to using LocalConnection to communicate with an
external application.  Over time this can grow to support multiple
approaches to recording and multiple data-collecting applications.
The new ICoverageAgent interface can be implemented by "coverage
agents" that may do anything they wish with the coverage information
they receive, while the AbstractCoverageAgent class provides basic
support for recording, independent of the means used to communicate
coverage data to an external application.


Report files now use .cvr extension

XML coverage reports now use the .cvr suffix, so that they can be
registered to start up the Coverage Viewer to examine them.