---
name: "cobertura-instrument"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "cobertura"
version: "2.1.1-2"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/cobertura-instrument"
---

# cobertura-instrument(1)

add coverage instrumentation to existing classes

## NAME

cobertura-instrument — add coverage instrumentation to existing classes

## SYNOPSIS

**cobertura-instrument** \[**--basedir dir**\]  \[**--datafile file**\]  \[**--destination dir**\]  \[**--ignore regex**\]  classes \[...\]

## DESCRIPTION

**cobertura-instrument** inserts instrumentation  instructions directly into your compiled Java classes. When these  instructions are encountered by the Java Virtual Machine, the inserted  code increments various counters so that it is possible to tell which  instructions have been encountered and which have not.

## OPTIONS

Classes may be specified individually, or as a directory tree  containing multiple classes.

- **--basedir dir**

  Specify the base directory containing the classes you want to  instrument. This command line parameter should appear before any  classes. If you are instrumenting classes in different directories,  you should specify multiple basedirs.

- **--datafile file**

  Specify the name of the file to use for storing the metadata  about your classes. This is a single file containing serialized  Java classes.  It contains information about the names of classes  in your project, their method names, line numbers, etc. It will be  updated as your tests are run, and will be referenced by the  Cobertura reporting command. Default value: "./cobertura.ser".

- **--destination dir**

  Specify the output directory for the instrumented classes.  If no destination directory is specified, then the uninstrumented  classes will be overwritten with their instrumented counterparts.

- **--ignore regex**

  Specify a regular expression to filter out certain lines of  your source code. This is useful for ignoring logging statements,  for example.  You can have as many \<ignore/\> statements as  you want. By default no files are ignored.

- **--auxClasspath**

  Add any classes/jars that cobertura is unable to find during  instrumentation.

## SEE ALSO

[junit(1)](/junit/1.md), [cobertura-check(1)](/cobertura-check/1.md), [cobertura-report(1)](/cobertura-report/1.md),  [cobertura-merge(1)](/cobertura-merge/1.md).

## AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Miguel Landaeta \<miguel@miguel.cc\>  for the **Debian** system (but may be used by others).  Permission is  granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under  the terms of the terms of GNU General Public License, Version 2   or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public  License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.