The inventive step is providing the way to test coverage data used in testing small computing platforms by assigning unique signatures to each node in the control flow graph and embedding control function calls. Signatures are embedded into the program during compilation time using the custom parser. When the program is executed the "exercised" signatures sequence is checked for correctness and used for deriving test coverage metric. This metric is used for improving unit and black-box tests. The invention provides the way to collect the path-based test coverage with minimal memory and code/size impact on target system.