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  • Activating an offline license
  • Distributing an offline license

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  1. Get Started
  2. Licensing

Offline license activation

PreviousOnline license activationNextDiffblue License Manager

Last updated 5 months ago

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Licensing Diffblue Cover in the offline mode detailed here is available only when purchased with the offline option. To use Diffblue Cover in an offline environment, such as a high-security or air-gapped network, requires this offline option.

Otherwise Diffblue Cover requires a with the Diffblue licensing server each time it is used.

Activating an offline license

This section describes how to activate a Diffblue Cover offline license.

Licensing the Diffblue Cover Plugin for IntelliJ in offline mode is performed using Cover CLI.

  1. Install and install .

  2. Before entering a license key, completely exit all instances of the IntelliJ IDE. Note that closing the project window is not sufficient.

  3. Follow the Cover CLI steps detailed in the tab above to activate your license in offline mode, using the Diffblue Cover CLI command dcover activate --offline

  4. Restart the IntelliJ IDE.

  5. You're now ready to write tests using Diffblue Cover Plugin.

Activating Diffblue Cover CLI offline:

  1. Install .

  2. Obtain your licence file and license key. To activate Diffblue Cover offline you will require your license file ls_activation.lic, along with your license key XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. These can be obtained from: - Your Diffblue Cover welcome email received following license purchase. - Your organization's internal file/app/license store. - Or contact for help finding this information.

  3. Run dcover license to prepare a directory for license installation:

➜  dcover license

12:55:23.365 INFO  Diffblue Cover 2022.02.02
12:55:23.368 INFO  There is no license linked to your product

This will create an offline directory at:

<USER_HOME>/.diffblue/offline/
  1. Copy ls_activation.lic to the Diffblue offline license directory:

  2. On Linux or macOS your home directory can be found at ~/.diffblue/offline/

  3. On Windows your user home can be found at C:\Users\<username>\.diffblue\offline\

  4. Run dcover activate --offline <license key> to install the offline license:

➜  dcover activate --offline XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

15:48:35.064 INFO  Found an offline license file at '<USER_HOME>/.diffblue/offline/ls_activation.lic'
15:48:35.494 INFO  Successfully activated offline license
  1. You're now ready to write tests using Diffblue Cover CLI.

Diffblue Cover CLI (also as used in Docker images and Diffblue Cover Pipelines) can be configured using environment variables. Please note that environment variables for offline license activation will not work for the plugin.

Configure the following environment variables:

  • DIFFBLUE_OFFLINE_LICENSE_ACTIVATION_FILE_CONTENTS with the contents of the ls_activation.lic

  • DIFFBLUE_LICENSE_KEY with the value of your license key.

Windows only note: due to Windows environment variable size limitations (e.g. cmd.exe, Windows system variables, etc.), please configure using PowerShell to ensure the license activation file environment variable can be stored. Note that third party software such as git bash usually support larger environment variables.

You can now activate your license with

dcover activate --offline

Distributing an offline license

This section describes how to make an offline Enterprise license for Diffblue Cover available to users without them requiring their own activation or access to the license key. This is typically useful when users have managed environments where new software can be rolled out to their environment, or as an alternative to environment variables in a CI environment.

  1. First, the license will need to be activated as above using the Diffblue Cover CLI and provided ls_activation.lic and license key, e.g.: dcover activate --offline <DIFFBLUE LICENSE KEY> this will put a license.key file into <USER_HOME>/.diffblue/.

  2. The license.key file above can now be placed into the <USER_HOME>/.diffblue directory of any user and this will be recognized by Diffblue Cover (Plugin and CLI).

Obtain your license file and license key. To activate Diffblue Cover offline you will require your license file ls_activation.lic, along with your license key XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. These can be obtained from: - Your Diffblue Cover welcome email received following license purchase. - Your organization's internal file/app/license store. - Or contact for help finding this information.

Diffblue Support
Enterprise Edition
remote license check
Diffblue Cover Plugin
Diffblue Cover CLI
Diffblue Cover CLI
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Enterprise Edition