Abstract: A method, apparatus and article of manufacture for persistent code coverage data collection are provided. Initially, a program for which code coverage data should be collected is identified and divided into code coverage tasks (i.e. basic blocks) and each code coverage task is given a unique name. Coverage points are then inserted into the program source code at the beginning of each coverage task to produce an instrumented program. The instrumented program is then compiled and link-edited with an appropriate library to produce a program executable. A set of test cases to be run for a persistent code coverage data collection purposes is identified next. Then, the code coverage database is created using the identified code coverage tasks and the test cases. The program executable is loaded and run with the set of identified test cases to write coverage point information into an output file.