Plug-ins

Coverage.py’s behavior can be extended with third-party plug-ins. A plug-in is a separately installed Python class that you register in your .coveragerc. Plugins can alter a number of aspects of coverage.py’s behavior, including implementing coverage measurement for non-Python files.

Information about using plug-ins is on this page. To write a plug-in, see Plug-in classes.

New in version 4.0.

Using plug-ins

To use a coverage.py plug-in, you install it and configure it. For this example, let’s say there’s a Python package called something that provides a coverage.py plug-in called something.plugin.

Install the plug-in’s package as you would any other Python package:
```
$ pip install something
```
Configure coverage.py to use the plug-in. You do this by editing (or creating) your .coveragerc file, as described in Configuration reference. The plugins setting indicates your plug-in. It’s a list of importable module names of plug-ins:
```
[run]
plugins =
    something.plugin
```
If the plug-in needs its own configuration, you can add those settings in the .coveragerc file in a section named for the plug-in:
```
[something.plugin]
option1 = True
option2 = abc.foo
```
Check the documentation for the plug-in for details on the options it takes.
Run your tests with coverage.py as you usually would. If you get a message like “Plugin file tracers (something.plugin) aren’t supported with PyTracer,” then you don’t have the C extension installed. The C extension is needed for certain plug-ins.

Available plug-ins

Some coverage.py plug-ins you might find useful:

Django template coverage.py plug-in: for measuring coverage in Django templates.
Conditional coverage plug-in: for measuring coverage based on any rules you define! Can exclude different lines of code that are only executed on different platforms, python versions, and with different dependencies installed.
Mako template coverage plug-in: for measuring coverage in Mako templates. Doesn’t work yet, probably needs some changes in Mako itself.