Adobe has made available a prerelease of an ActionScript Code Coverage Plug-in for Flash Builder, which aims to help developers understand exactly what code is executed while an application is running. When added to Flash Builder, the plug-in provides a new Eclipse perspective that allows you to start the code coverage tool.
Developers will be able to use the code coverage tool to see which areas of code have not been exercised during execution so that additional testing requirements can be identified.
The tool provides detailed line coverage and method coverage reporting, as well as highlighting classes that are not linked into the application. Developers will be able to use the ActionScript Code Coverage Plug-in for Flash Builder with applications developed in ActionScript 3, optionally using either Flex SDK 3.x or Flex SDK 4.x, targeting both Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.
Prerequisites to running the tests are:
- Debug version of Flash Player
- SWF file must have been compiled in debug mode
- The preloaded SWF must be local trusted
Up until now developer that needed Code Coverage for ActionScript had to rely on Flexcover, which is an open source code coverage tool for Flex, AIR and AS3.
Adobe’s interest in providing a Code Coverage tool was pointed out by Joe Berkovitz of Allurent, when he was interviewed back in 2008 by InfoQ, regarding the initial experimental release of Flexcover:
“I can't comment on anything going on at Adobe, but I know that they are interested in code coverage and that people on the Flex team are actively thinking about how to support it. Also, they've been a big help in getting Flexcover off the ground. I'm grateful for that!”
You can find more information about Flash, Flex and ActionScript right here on InfoQ.