Exclusion Markers

You can exclude parts of your code from coverage metrics.

  • If GCOVR_EXCL_LINE appears within a line, that line is ignored.

  • If GCOVR_EXCL_START appears within a line, all following lines (including the current line) are ignored until a GCOVR_EXCL_STOP marker is encountered.

  • If GCOVR_EXCL_FUNCTION in the line of the function definition but not in front of the definition, the lines of the function are ignored. This marker needs the gcov JSON format version 2 which is generated by gcc-14. If the needed info isn't available a warning is printed if the tag is found. Also a warning is printed if no function is defined at the tag location. See also --exclude-function

  • If GCOVR_EXCL_BR_* markers are used the same exclusion rules apply as above, with the difference being that they are only taken into account for branch coverage.

  • If GCOVR_EXCL_BR_SOURCE the branches which have one of the block ids of the current line as destination block are excluded from the coverage. This can be used e.e. in a default branch which is used for error handling to exclude the source branch from the coverage.

Instead of GCOVR_*, the markers may also start with GCOV_* or LCOV_*. However, start and stop markers must use the same style. The prefix is configurable with the option --exclude-pattern-prefix.

The excluded region not includes the line with the stop marker:

code
code
excluded       // GCOVR_EXCL_START
still excluded
...
still excluded
NOT excluded // GCOVR_EXCL_STOP
code
code

In the excluded regions, any coverage is excluded.

Added in version 8.0: If --verbose is used the exclusion ranges are logged.