[anecdotal/opinion] report: interspersed branch / uncovered lines are much less readable than 4.x era

[asottile]

in coverage 5.x (or at least, that's when I noticed it) the missing branches are now interspersed with missing lines in the coverage report terminal display

Here's an example:

babi/highlight.py              389     15    116     11    93%   93->94, 94, 101->102, 102, 109->110, 110, 119->120, 120-121, 122->123, 123-124, 159->160, 160, 163->164, 164, 184-185, 199->200, 200, 201->202, 202, 652->653, 653, 679->680, 680

prior to coverage 5, the output looked like this:

babi/highlight.py              389     15    116     11    93%   94, 102, 110, 120-121, 123-124, 160, 164, 184-185, 200, 202, 653, 680, 93->94, 101->102, 109->110, 119->120, 122->123, 159->160, 163->164, 199->200, 201->202, 652->653, 679->680

I prefer the older output because:

• when I am looking to increase coverage, I'm first going to try and increase the line coverage. This will always necessarily increase the branch coverage as well
• with branches and lines interspersed, it is difficult to see at a glance what the next line to fix is (this is especially difficult when ##-## looks very much like ##->##)

A hacky, and far-from-perfect workaround that I'm using right now is coverage report | sed -r 's/[0-9]+->[0-9]+//g;s/,( ,)+/,/g' which (mostly) hides the missed branches until I'm ready to work on the missing branch coverage

[tolomea]

I think this enhancement I just suggested would greatly improve the situation for you #1065

[tolomea]

Out of curiosity I looked through your output, none of the branch reports there are adding useful information and they could all be omitted leaving 94, 102, 110, 120-121, 123-124, 160, 164, 184-185, 200, 202, 653, 680

[nedbat]

This is now released as part of coverage 5.5.