Use other code coverage driver than xdebug

Question

I want to use pcov instead of xdebug for code coverage generation.

I'm using Docker and I have xdebug installed.

Can I be sure that xdebug won't affect test execution if I run the following command?

php -d xdebug.default_enable=0 -d pcov.enabled=1 path/to/phpunit --coverage-text

I read that pcov might be faster but as I understood xdebug has to be disabled.

Is it better do the following to achieve the fastest coverage instead of running the above command?

1. remove/truncate xdebug config

2. run tests

   php -d pcov.enabled=1 path/to/phpunit --coverage-text
   

3. restore xdebug config

Answer 1

Xdebug and PCOV both overload the same parts of the engine, as a result they are incompatible, and there's no sense in the authors trying to make them compatible.

Xdebug must not be loaded if you want to use PCOV as the driver for php-code-coverage.

Source: I wrote pcov ...