Excluding binaries

[Piotr-Miller]

Hi Guys,

Got question about excluding particular binary from instrumentation, let me call it xxx.dll.
This is not test binary, but I want to exclude it anyway.
I was trying different approaches, but it seems none of them are working, for instance:

altcover --inplace -i "path to release folder" -s="xxx.dll"
altcover --inplace -i "path to release folder" -e="xxx.dll"

I will appreciate any tip.

[SteveGilham]

Those filters work on the assembly name (the value used for linkage) rather than the assembly path (which includes the file name extension). Strictly, the matched string is System.Reflection.AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName(path to assembly).Name; but in all reasonable cases that is the same as the value of System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(path to assembly).

The string supplied as a filter argument is a regex that is matched against the assembly name; that also means that a literal . in the filter is a wild-card match -- those examples are excluding assemblies like path to release folder\xxx0dll.dll or path to release folder\xxxZdll.exe

The command line you want would be

altcover --inplace -i "path to release folder" -s="yyy"

where yyy is some unique substring of the assembly name, regex escaped. As an example, from the AltCover build process

let AltCoverFilter (p: Primitive.PrepareOptions) =
    { p with
          AssemblyFilter =
              [ @"\.DataCollector"; "Sample" ]
              @ (p.AssemblyFilter |> Seq.toList)
...

which excludes the AltCover.DataCollector assembly, and all the code used as test data in assemblies called Sample##.dll for various values of ##.

[Piotr-Miller]

Thanks Steve for explanation. It's working as a charm.