Installing pcov on Laravel Herd

Luckily, it's not to tricky. Let's get started.

Check installed modules first¶

I'd recommend checking to see if pcov is installed or not first (incase it's been misconfigured). We'll run this command at the end of the steps to verify we have it installed too.

php -m | grep pcov

php -m lists modules, and grep just searches for pcov.

If you see no output here — great, as expected it's not installed.

Install pcov¶

Using Homebrew, install pcov. Ensure you match up the version of PHP you're using (in my case, PHP 8.3).

brew install shivammathur/extensions/pcov@8.3

If you were using PHP 8.2, you'd run this:

brew install shivammathur/extensions/pcov@8.2

Locate pcov.so¶

Next up, find the pcov.so extension. Because we've used Homebrew, it'll likely be within the /opt/homebrew/Cellar/pcov@8.3 directory.

Inside this directory, you'll find a version number, so the full path would be /opt/homebrew/Cellar/pcov@8.3/1.0.12/pcov.so. Make sure you've found this on your machine and noted down the full path to the pcov.so file. You'll need that next.

Modify php.ini¶

From your Laravel Herd menu, select Open configuration files and then open 83/php.ini in your editor of choice. It'll look something like this:

curl.cainfo=/Users/alexgs/Library/Application Support/Herd/config/php/cacert.pem
openssl.cafile=/Users/alexgs/Library/Application Support/Herd/config/php/cacert.pem
pcre.jit=0

memory_limit=400000M
upload_max_filesize=2000000M
auto_prepend_file=/Applications/Herd.app/Contents/Resources/valet/dump-loader.php
extension=/Applications/Herd.app/Contents/Resources/herd-ext/herd-83-arm64.so

Add the pcov.so file as an extension:

curl.cainfo=/Users/alexgs/Library/Application Support/Herd/config/php/cacert.pem
openssl.cafile=/Users/alexgs/Library/Application Support/Herd/config/php/cacert.pem
pcre.jit=0

memory_limit=400000M
upload_max_filesize=2000000M
auto_prepend_file=/Applications/Herd.app/Contents/Resources/valet/dump-loader.php
extension=/Applications/Herd.app/Contents/Resources/herd-ext/herd-83-arm64.so
extension=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/pcov@8.3/1.0.12/pcov.so

Restart Herd¶

On the command line, run:

herd restart

This will restart all Herd services and reload php.ini. You can also choose Stop all and Start all from the Herd menu if you prefer.

Verify pcov is installed¶

Back to the command we ran earlier, list all your PHP modules and grep for pcov.

php -m | grep pcov

If you see pcov output, you're done! Execute your test runner with --coverage and everything should work nicely.

pest --coverage

Happy testing!