solidity-coverage/docs/faq.md

# FAQ

### Continuous Integration: installing Metacoin on TravisCI with Coveralls


**Step 1: Create a metacoin project & install coverage tools**

```bash
$ truffle init

# Install coverage dependencies
$ npm init
$ npm install --save-dev coveralls
$ npm install --save-dev solidity-coverage
```

**Step 2: Add test and coverage scripts to the `package.json`:**

```javascript
"scripts": {
    "test": "truffle test",
    "coverage": "./node_modules/.bin/solidity-coverage"
},
```

**Step 3: Create a .travis.yml:**

```yml
sudo: required
dist: trusty
language: node_js
node_js:
  - '7'
install:
  - npm install -g truffle
  - npm install -g ethereumjs-testrpc
  - npm install
script:
  - npm test
before_script:
  - testrpc > /dev/null & 
  - sleep 5
after_script:                                               
  - npm run coverage && cat coverage/lcov.info | coveralls
```
**NB:** It's probably best practice to run coverage in CI as an `after_script` rather than assume its equivalence to `truffle test`. Solidity-coverage's `testrpc` uses gasLimits far above the current blocklimit and rewrites your contracts in ways that might affect their behavior. It's also less robust than Truffle and may fail more frequently. 

**Step 4: Toggle the project on at Travis and Codecov.io and push.** 

[It should look like this](https://coveralls.io/github/sc-forks/metacoin)

**Appendix: Coveralls vs. Codecov**

[Codecov.io](https://codecov.io/) is another CI coverage provider (we use it for this project). They're very reliable, easy to integrate with and have a nice UI. Unfortunately we haven't found a way to get their reports to show branch coverage. Coveralls has excellent branch coverage reporting out of the box (see below).

![missed_branch](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/7332026/28502310-6851f79c-6fa4-11e7-8c80-c8fd80808092.png)




### Running out of gas
If you have hardcoded gas costs into your tests some of them may fail when using solidity-coverage.
This is because the instrumentation process increases the gas costs for using the contracts, due to
the extra events. If this is the case, then the coverage may be incomplete. To avoid this, using
`estimateGas` to estimate your gas costs should be more resilient in most cases.

**Example:**
```javascript
// Hardcoded Gas Call
MyContract.deployed().then(instance => {       
  instance.claimTokens(0, {gasLimit: 3000000}).then(() => {
      assert(web3.eth.getBalance(instance.address).equals(new BigNumber('0')))
      done();
  })
});

// Using gas estimation
MyContract.deployed().then(instance => {       
  const data = instance.contract.claimTokens.getData(0);
  const gasEstimate = web3.eth.estimateGas({to: instance.address, data: data});
  instance.claimTokens(0, {gasLimit: gasEstimate}).then(() => {
      assert(web3.eth.getBalance(instance.address).equals(new BigNumber('0')))
      done();
  })
});
```

### Running out of memory (Locally and in CI)
(See [issue #59](https://github.com/sc-forks/solidity-coverage/issues/59)). 
If your target contains dozens of contracts, you may run up against node's 1.7MB memory cap during the
contract compilation step. This can be addressed by setting the `testCommand` option in `.solcover.js` as 
below: 
```javascript
testCommand: 'node --max-old-space-size=4096 ../node_modules/.bin/truffle test --network coverage'
``` 
Note the path: it reaches outside a temporarily generated `coverageEnv` folder to access a locally
installed version of truffle in your root directory's `node_modules`.

Large projects may also hit their CI container memcap running coverage after unit tests. This can be
addressed on TravisCI by adding `sudo: required` to the `travis.yml`, which raises the container's 
limit to 7.5MB (ProTip courtesy of [@federicobond](https://github.com/federicobond).

### Running out of time (in mocha)
Truffle sets a default mocha timeout of 5 minutes. Because tests run slower under coverage, it's possible to hit this limit with a test that iterates hundreds of times before producing a result. Timeouts can be disabled by configuring the mocha option in `truffle.js` as below: (ProTip courtesy of [@cag](https://github.com/cag))  
```javascript
module.exports = {
    networks: {
        development: {
            host: "localhost",
            port: 8545,
            network_id: "*" 
        },
        ...etc...
    },
    mocha: {
        enableTimeouts: false
    }
}
```

### Using alongside HDWalletProvider
[See Truffle issue #348](https://github.com/trufflesuite/truffle/issues/348).
HDWalletProvider crashes solidity-coverage, so its constructor shouldn't be invoked while running this tool.
One way around this is to instantiate the HDWallet conditionally in `truffle.js`:

```javascript
var HDWalletProvider = require('truffle-hdwallet-provider');
var mnemonic = 'bark moss walnuts earth flames felt grateful dead sophia loren'; 

if (!process.env.SOLIDITY_COVERAGE){
  provider = new HDWalletProvider(mnemonic, 'https://ropsten.infura.io/')
}

module.exports = {
  networks: 
    ropsten: {
      provider: provider,
      network_id: 3 
    },
    coverage: {
      host: "localhost",
      network_id: "*",
      port: 8555,
      ...etc..
    }
    ...etc...
```

And set up an npm script to run the coverage tool like this:
```javascript
"scripts": {
    "coverage": "SOLIDITY_COVERAGE=true ./node_modules/.bin/solidity-coverage"
},
```