How to correctly specify arguments of a covered application for the console runner Follow

When running coverage analysis using the dotCover console runner, typically you should pass some arguments to the covered application. To do this, you should:

• either specify the arguments at the end of the command line after double dash --
• or use the --targetArguments parameter.

Specifying args after double dash --

For example, to run coverage analysis of unit tests in a .NET Core project:

dotCover.exe dotnet --output=myRep.html --reportType=HTML -- test

test passed at the end of the command line is an argument of dotnet (the target of coverage analysis). This is an equivalent for the following command line:

dotCover.exe dotnet  --targetArguments=”test” --output=myRep.html --reportType=HTML

Note that when you pass target arguments after double dash, no characters escaping is needed. dotCover does not process these arguments in any way.

Specifying args in the --targetArguments parameter

For example, to get coverage of NUnit tests in some MyTests.dll assembly:

dotcover cover --targetExecutable="D:\NUnit\nunit-console.exe" --targetArguments="D:\MyProject\MyTests.dll" --output=report.html --reportType=HTML

Arguments with relative paths

By default, if arguments contain relative paths, the console runner converts them to the absolute ones according to the following rules:

• Relative paths specified in an XML configuration file are considered relative to the location of this file.
• Relative paths specified in the command line are considered relative to the current working directory.

For example, you want to cover E:\Tests\Builds\MyTests.dll using NUnit. Your current directory is E:\Tests\Builds\.

E:\Tests\Builds>c:\dotCoverCmd\dotcover.exe cover --targetExecutable="C:\Program Files\NUnit 2.6\bin\nunit-console.exe" --targetArguments=".\MyTests.dll /xml=..\Coverage\Cover.xml" --output=CoverageReport.html --reportType=HTML

NUnit will get the following arguments:

E:\Tests\Builds\MyTests.dll /xml=E:\Tests\Coverage\Cover.xml

If you do not want dotCover to analyze target arguments, specify the --analyzeTargetArguments=false argument.

Arguments with spaces and double quotes

There are two general rules you must follow:

• If a target arguments string contains spaces, you must enclose it in double quotes.
• All double quotes inside target arguments must be escaped with a backslash.

For example, if you want to pass the following line to your coverage target

“C:\My Application\MyPath” a=10

you should specify the following

--targetArguments=“\”C:\My Application\MyPath\” a=10”