Combine coverage files without deleting combined files

[elarivie]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When using the combine feature, a combined coverage file is created and💥 the original files are deleted

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like the original files to be kept untouched (do not delete them)

Or have a command line argument to tell combine to keep the original coverage files

Describe alternatives you've considered

• alternative # 1 is to create backup copy of the original coverage files somewhere else (temp folder) combine them there and bring back the combined file.

• Alternative # 2 is to create a backup copy somewhere else of the original coverage files, combine, copy the originals back after

• Alternative # 3 Run all test twice to avoid the need to combine coverage files

• Alternative # 4 wait till the coverage files are no more needed before doing combine

Note: I don't like any of the above alternatives hack

Additional context
Here is my use case:

1- I run different kind of test (unit tests, integration tests, smoke tests, ...)
2- I then obtain a coverage file for each of them (unittest.coverage, integrationtest.coverage, smoketest.coverage)
3- I combine them into a alltest.coverage
4- I successfully obtain the alltest.coverage but 💥Oups!; the original unittest.coverage, integrationtest.coverage, smoketest.coverage, etc are gone (they have been deleted by the combine)
5- 💥 I want to use the coverage files of each test types for further processing but their coverage files are gone.

[nedbat]

This seems like a simple enough option to add. But I am curious: why not generate the individual reports first from the separate data files, and then combine them to produce the combined report?

[elarivie]

I didn't write it in my original post but the reason is because I am using GNUmake to coordinates the build steps.

So from a GNUmake point of view once the coverages files exists it triggers the next targets which depend on them:

1. The target which combine them
2. and also in parallel the targets which generates reports

Step 2 fail because of step 1

[nedbat]

This has been implemented in #1110

[nedbat]

This is now released as part of coverage 5.5.