gcda5

gcda5 is a filename that may appear in contexts involving GNU coverage data produced by the gcov tooling within the GCC suite. It refers to a binary data file generated during program execution when coverage instrumentation is enabled. In a typical workflow, compiling with coverage options (-coverage or -fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage) creates, for each instrumented source file, a corresponding .gcno file at compile time and a .gcda file after running the program. The .gcno file stores the static control-flow graph, while the .gcda file records runtime execution information such as per-line and per-branch counts.

The specific name gcda5 (as suffix) is not a standardized or universal designation; the actual gcda file name is derived from the source file and the build environment. In practice, you may encounter gcda data files with various numeric suffixes or embedded identifiers depending on how the build system names artifacts. These files are binary and not intended for manual editing. They are consumed by gcov and related tools (such as lcov or gcovr) to generate coverage reports that summarize which parts of the code were executed during tests.

Use and management: after running tests, gcov and related tools read the .gcda (and the corresponding .gcno) files to produce human-readable coverage data. If coverage data needs to be reset, the common approach is to delete the .gcda files (and optionally the .gcno files) and re-run the build and tests to regenerate fresh data.

Limitations: gcda files are platform- and build-specific; moving them between environments without matching .gcno data can yield invalid coverage results. The concept of gcda5, therefore, reflects a particular instance of the broader gcda data file produced by gcov.