Code Coverage

Yerd bundles pcov, a fast line-coverage driver, with every PHP version it installs - so you can run your test suite with coverage (PHPUnit, Pest, artisan test --coverage) without installing or configuring an extension yourself.

Coverage is exposed through dedicated cover shims: phpcover for your default PHP version, and php<version>cover (for example php8.4cover) for a specific one. They live in the same {data}/bin directory as the regular php shim.

Zero overhead by default

The plain php and php<version> shims never load pcov, so normal CLI scripts and your .test sites run with no coverage instrumentation. pcov is loaded only when you invoke a …cover shim - coverage is strictly opt-in, per command.

Running tests with coverage

Use a cover shim anywhere you'd normally use php:

# Default PHP version, Pest or PHPUnit
phpcover artisan test --coverage
phpcover vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-text

# Pin coverage to a specific PHP version
php8.4cover vendor/bin/pest --coverage

Each cover shim runs the matching PHP CLI with pcov enabled (-d extension=<pcov.so> -d pcov.enabled=1), then hands off to your script. Your tooling sees a PHP with a working coverage driver and reports as usual.

Add the shim dir to your PATH

The cover shims sit in the same {data}/bin directory as php (Yerd prints the exact path). Once that's on your PATH, phpcover and php<version>cover are available everywhere, right next to the version shims described in PHP Versions.

Automatic, per version

You don't install or enable anything. Whenever you install a PHP version, Yerd fetches the matching pcov build for it in the background and (re)creates its cover shim. The extension is downloaded from the forjedio/yerd-php-ext releases, verified by SHA-256, and stored alongside your PHP installs at {data}/php-ext/php-<version>/pcov.so - beside the install, so a PHP patch update never deletes it.

• phpcover always tracks your global default version, resolved at run time - change the default with yerd use and phpcover follows.
• php<version>cover is created for each installed version and removed when you uninstall that version.

Needs a matching released build

Like the dumps extension, pcov is ABI-specific: one build per PHP minor, per OS, per architecture. If a build for your exact PHP version and platform hasn't been published yet, the cover shim reports that pcov isn't installed for that version rather than running without coverage. The fetch is best-effort and never blocks a PHP install.

Unix only

Cover shims are created on macOS and Linux only. They are not generated on other platforms.

How it works

The yerd binary is a multi-call binary: before it parses any CLI arguments, it checks the name it was invoked as. The phpcover and php<version>cover entries in {data}/bin are symlinks back to yerd itself; when yerd sees one of those names, it resolves the right PHP CLI binary plus that version's pcov.so and execs PHP with coverage enabled. Invoked under any other name it falls through to the normal CLI, so the clean php/php<version> shims are untouched.

See also

• PHP Versions - installing versions and the php/php<version> shims.
• Laravel Dumps - the other extension served from yerd-php-ext.
• yerd-php-ext architecture - the native extensions and their download contract.