Installation

Installing coverage.py is done in the usual ways. The simplest way is with pip:

$ pip install coverage

To install a pre-release version, you will need to specify --pre:

$ pip install --pre coverage

The alternate old-school technique is:

  1. Install (or already have installed) setuptools or Distribute.
  2. Download the appropriate kit from the coverage.py page on the Python Package Index.
  3. Run python setup.py install.

Installing from source

Coverage.py includes a C extension for speed. If you are installing from source, you may need to install the python-dev support files, for example with:

$ sudo apt-get install python-dev

or for Python 3.x:

$ sudo apt-get install python3-dev

Installing on Windows

For Windows, kits are provided on the PyPI page for different versions of Python and different CPU architectures. These kits require that setuptools be installed as a pre-requisite, but otherwise are self-contained. They have the C extension pre-compiled so there’s no need to worry about compilers.

Checking the installation

If all went well, you should be able to open a command prompt, and see coverage.py installed properly:

$ coverage --version
Coverage.py, version 4.0a6.
Documentation at https://coverage.readthedocs.org/en/4.0a6

You can also invoke coverage.py as a module:

$ python -m coverage --version
Coverage.py, version 4.0a6.
Documentation at https://coverage.readthedocs.org/en/4.0a6