Code Coverage Of Unit Tests Using Qt 5 On macOS

Qt Framework

I was inspired while watching a talk by Kevin Ottens about refactoring OpenGL code in Qt to take a look at gcov & lcov. gcov is used to analyze code coverage – which lines of code have actually been executed while running an application. lcov is a tool that can produce HTML reports from the gcov output.

If you have a suite of unit tests that you run on your code, you can use these tools to see which the lines of code are covered by your tests and which are not.

I couldn’t find a decent primer on how to set this up properly for my Qt projects on macOS so I could run it from Qt Creator, so I thought I’d write up how I did it.

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Using C++11 Lambdas As Qt Slots

Qt Framework

I have an old codebase I started writing using the Qt 3.x framework—a little while before Qt4 was released. It’s still alive! I still work on it, keeping up-to-date with Qt and C++ as much as possible, and I still ship the product. Over the years I have moved the codebase along through Qt4 to Qt5, and on to compilers supporting C++11. One of the things I’ve sometimes found a little excessive is declaring slots for things that are super short and won’t be reused.

Here’s a simplified example from my older code that changes the title when a project is “dirty” (needs to be saved):

/// header
class myMainWindow ...

   private slots:
      void  slotProjectDirtyChanged();

	private:
		void	_setTitle( const QString &inTitle );
	
// implementation
...
   connect( inProject, SIGNAL( signalDirtyChange( bool ) ),
   						  SLOT( slotProjectDirtyChanged() ) );
...

void  myMainWindow::slotProjectDirtyChanged()
{
	QString	name = mProject->name();
	if ( mProject->dirty() )
      name += '*';

   _setTitle( name );
}

/// header

class myMainWindow ...

private slots:

void slotProjectDirtyChanged();

private:

void _setTitle( const QString &inTitle );

// implementation

...

connect( inProject, SIGNAL( signalDirtyChange( bool ) ),

SLOT( slotProjectDirtyChanged() ) );

...

void myMainWindow::slotProjectDirtyChanged()

{

QString name = mProject->name();

if ( mProject->dirty() )

name += '*';

_setTitle( name );

}

(Aside: If you are wondering about my naming convention, I developed a style when using Qt early on (c. 2000) where signals are named signalFoo() and slots are named slotFoo(). This way I know at a glance what the intent is. If I’m about to modify a slot function I might take an extra minute to look around since most IDEs can’t tell syntactically where it’s used in a SLOT() macro. In this case you have to search for it textually.)

Thanks to C++11 lambdas and Qt’s ongoing evolution, these short slots can be replaced by a more succinct syntax. This avoids having to declare a method in your class declaration and shortens your implementation code. Both desirable goals!

Let’s take a look.

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Clustering Markers On Leaflet Maps

So you’re creating an interactive map using Leaflet and have diligently added your 8107 markers to the map.

Leaflet – Too Many Markers!

Uh-oh. Definitely slow and pretty much doesn’t provide a user experience. What do we do now?

There’s a great plugin for Leaflet called Leaflet.markercluster by Dave Leaver which will save us.

Leaflet Clusters

This plugin clusters the markers and shows the number of items in each cluster, and as we zoom it adjusts the clusters based on the current view. This not only makes the map easier for the user to understand, it’s also a lot more efficient.

If you followed my previous Leaflet tutorial, adding the clustering plugin is extremely simple. Let’s take a look.

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Creating An Interactive Map With Leaflet and OpenStreetMap

I’ve known for a while that the interactive map of the world showing some of my bloodstain pattern analysis software customers was kind of slow. I also knew that I was using a very outdated version of Google’s API for displaying the data. Yesterday I decided to take a look at it to see what I needed to do to fix it up.

Old Google Map

My first stop was the Google page about moving to v3 of the API. Apparently I needed to get a new API key by signing up for something with my Google Account. Google has added usage limits and now tracks absolutely everything (yes, they probably did before, but now it’s more explicit). I also needed to consider whether or not I can use the maps on a commercial site.

I don’t like hurdles, and I like simplicity, so I decided to look around for alternatives. I remembered looking at OpenStreetMap (OSM) several years ago when I originally built my map and deciding it wasn’t quite good enough. I decided to check it out again to see how they were doing. My how things change!

OpenStreetMap

Because I’m a good lazy developer (by that I mean I avoid writing things when they already exist, are well-coded, and maintainable), my first thought was to grab a WordPress plugin and to use it for my map. I tried out the OSM – OpenStreetMap plugin. While it sort-of worked for what I was trying to do, it was not as customizable as I’d like, it seemed too heavy for one map on one site, and it tied me to WordPress (which my other site hasn’t moved to yet).

My next thought was to look for a JavaScript library with a nice API to integrate and handle most of the heavy lifting. Poking around the OSM site, I ran across OpenLayers. It looked pretty powerful, and has a ton of stuff in its API. I downloaded it (10M?) and took a look but I really just wanted something simpler. Then I found Leaflet. Exactly what I needed. Small, simple, great documentation, and some really straightforward examples.

Leaflet

Even though I had to brush up on some JavaScript, jQuery, and JSON concepts—things I rarely use— I ended up researching possibilities and replacing my Google Map with an OpenStreetMap/Leaflet version in just a couple of hours. It’s now much faster and simpler to customize.

New OpenStreetMap/Leaflet Map

In this article, I’ll step through an example that shows how to:

set up a simple map using the Leaflet JavaScript library
load marker locations from a JSON file
change the marker icon
have the markers show some data when clicked

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Converting Between cv::Mat and QImage or QPixmap

In a previous article, I outlined how to compile OpenCV for Mac OS X and to build and run a small example. In that post I used OpenCV‘s High-Level GUI (highgui) module to display a simple interface using the Qt framework. This is great if you’re writing a one-off program or are just experimenting with OpenCV, but how do you interface with your own Qt-based project if you don’t want to (or can’t) use the highgui module?

OpenCV Library

Qt Library

The first hurdle is converting between data formats so you can work with images in both OpenCV and Qt. So how do you move an image’s data between a cv::Mat and a QImage or QPixmap so you can display it in a widget?

In this article, I present some functions to handle these conversions and explain how to use them.

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Packaging a Mac OS X Application Using a DMG

I learned early on in my software career that packaging up a release of an application can be a real pain. Not only is it time consuming, but it is quite easy to forget a file or miss something when there are so many steps involved and you have to do it frequently. The solution to this is to automate the process. Putting together scripts to package up a release helps avoid missing steps and speeds up development and deployment of releases and updates.

One of the challenges of automating this on Mac OS X is figuring out how to script the creation of Apple disk image (DMG) files. Getting the arguments to hdiutil correct can be quite a challenge! In this post, I’ll give an example of a script I use to do the following:

Copy all the necessary files to a staging area
Strip and compress the executable files and libraries
Create a DMG of the correct size for the release
Add a link to /Applications to the DMG
Add a background to the DMG so when it opens up your company logo or application graphic appears
Check the background image’s DPI to ensure it is 72. Fix it if it’s not.
Resize the window and icons, and position items in the DMG so when it opens everything is in the right place
Create a final, compressed DMG

Packaging An Application Using a DMG

Let’s take a look… Continue reading →

Clean Up Your LinkedIn Page

Over the years, LinkedIn has been adding “content” to the data feed and to the right-hand side of the home page which cannot be turned off in the preferences – things like Jobs You May Be Interested In (I’m not) and Companies You May Want To Follow (I don’t). The worst of these is the LinkedIn Today blob at the top of the updates.

LinkedIn Today Blob

When it initially showed up, I put in a ticket asking how to turn it off and was told that they were working on it. Six months later I hadn’t heard back, so I asked again (and again) and they have now informed me that it’s permanent.

Well I’ve decided to make it unpermanent by hiding all these spammy bits with Adblock Plus. (If you are not surfing with an ad blocker, you should. Adblock Plus is simple to install and it will enhance your browsing experience and your life in general.)

Here’s how to do it…

Update 07 May 2012: Added instructions to remove Sponsored Content
Update 18 July 2014: Added instructions to remove LinkedIn Pulse

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