Test for private constructor to get full code coverage

Imagine we have a simple helper class which only consists of public static methods.

public class Helper {
  public static void doSomething() {}
}

And the test:

import org.junit.Test;

public class HelperTest {
 @Test
 public void testDoSomething() {
   Helper.doSomething();
 }
}

Our code coverage tool won't show us a 100% coverage, because the (default) constructor is not invoked. For example Intellij IDEA only shows 50%.

One solution would be to simply invoke the default constructor with new Helper.doSomething(). But we don't want to have objects of this class and therefore override the default constructor with a private one:

public class Helper {
    private Helper() {}
    public static void doSomething() {}
}

The problem is, that now even the test cannot instantiate the class. And as we are testdriven, the question is: Should the decision to create a class without any objects be motivated by tests, too? In my opinion yes. I don't want some other programmer to remove the private constructor. At least a test shall break.

We reach this by the following test:

import static org.junit.Assert.assertTrue;
import java.lang.reflect.Constructor;
import java.lang.reflect.Modifier;
import org.junit.Test;

public class HelperTest {

    @Test
    public void testDoSomething() throws Exception {
        Helper.doSomething();
    }

    @Test
    public void testPrivateConstructor() throws Exception {
        Constructor constructor = Helper.class.getDeclaredConstructor();
        assertTrue("Constructor is not private", Modifier.isPrivate(constructor.getModifiers()));

        constructor.setAccessible(true);
        constructor.newInstance();
    }
}

Now we have a guard to the design decision of a private constructor and our tests are back on 100% coverage again.