JaCoCo VS robovm

I will use here JaCoCo, where also the JaCoCo-Maven-lugin exists for the usage in your Maven builds. This article will show how to configure the code coverage to finally get the results for unit- and integration-tests.

In protection rules, I added build workflow in Require status checks to pass before merging. This is to ensure that before merging code in master branch, build should run successfully. I also added Jacoco Code Coverage to make sure that enough unit tests are available in project and Detekt to make sure that code in project is readable. I added them in build configuration. Even if one of them gives error, build will fail. Whenever, someone push code in pull request, build action will run and check if build is running successfully or not.

Code coverage analysis tools quantify the amount of tested code, serving as a valuable tool to inform on code structure and testing related decisions. We will make use of JaCoCo, JaCoCo produces reports on multiple kinds of code coverage metrics including instructions, line and branch coverage.

One specific example where I regularly use a profile in this way is for configuring code coverage. In all of my Java projects, I use JaCoCo for generating code coverage reports. I use JaCoCo during the Maven test phase. However, while developing I find it useful at times to exclude coverage reporting to reduce the build time. But in my CI/CD workflows in GitHub Actions, I activate the code coverage profile during pull-requests and pushes to the default branch. For pull-requests, my GitHub Actions workflow comments the code coverage on the PR and uploads the coverage report as a workflow artifact, where I can inspect it as necessary. And during a push to the default branch, my workflow updates coverage badges to keep them up to date with the current state of the default branch. I can also activate the code coverage profile locally while developing, such as prior to submitting a pull-request, to ensure that I didn't miss testing something.

In Unit tests, individual software code components are checked if it is working as expected or not. Unit tests isolate a function or module of code and verify its correctness. We can use tools like JaCoCo for Java and Mocha, and Jasmine for NodeJS to generate unit test reports. We can also send these reports to SonarQube which shows us code coverage and the percentage of your code covered by your test cases.

And there is the original jacoco/jacoco: (0.8.7: released this on May 5, 2021), but it's for Java. I'm not sure if we can use it with multiple flavors on Android.

Make sure to also update to Jacoco 0.8.7 to avoid test issues: https://github.com/jacoco/jacoco/releases/tag/v0.8.7

Naturally depends on the use case, yet they work good enough to be in business for 20 years.

https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/perc

https://www.aicas.com/wp/products-services/jamaicavm-tools/

https://www.codenameone.com/

Android 5 & 6 (only changed back into JIT/AOT due to long compile times), https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/07/art-runtime/

Unfortunely the best well known, Excelsior JET, is no longer in business, most likely due to GraalVM and OpenJ9 being available as free beer, while PTC, Aicas Codename One are safe in their domains.

There is also RoboVM (https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm) as free beer, however it actually started as a commercial product, and the acquisition from Xamarin kind of stagnated it (naturally).

I think libGDX still uses RoboVM, but I’m not sure if it’s being actively developed anymore.

For iOS the RoboVM project intends to be an AOT compiler for Java bytecode.

Kotlin is not ideal for iOS development afaik (maybe with RoboVM). With regards to Android development, it is perfect. For desktop applications it's good, there are always tradeoffs here. With regards to payment, I believe it is generally the case that you're paid more the harder the language is to learn (so C > C# > Python). This also affects how much people are looking for a certain kind of developer - there are more JS jobs than jobs requiring a C++ developer. Kotlin is a good choice to start though. It's not too complicated, it's not so simple that it's limiting you somehow, it's not too slow for most applications (+ it supports native somewhat) and it has a good environment with stable libraries you can rely on.

Yes, these are the native code compilers for Java, able to target Apple mobile platforms.

https://www.codenameone.com/

https://gluonhq.com/products/mobile/

https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm