Step 6: Adding Support for a Testing Dashboard

Adding support for submitting our test results to a dashboard is simple. We already defined a number of tests for our project in Testing Support. Now we just have to run those tests and submit them to CDash.

Exercise 1 - Send Results to a Testing Dashboard

Goal

Display our CTest results with CDash.

Helpful Resources

Files to Edit

  • CMakeLists.txt

Getting Started

For this exercise, complete TODO 1 in the top-level CMakeLists.txt by including the CTest module. This will enable testing with CTest as well as dashboard submissions to CDash, so we can safely remove the call to enable_testing().

We will also need to acquire a CTestConfig.cmake file to be placed in the top-level directory. When run, the ctest executable will read this file to gather information about the testing dashboard. It contains:

  • The project name

  • The project "Nightly" start time

    • The time when a 24 hour "day" starts for this project.

  • The URL of the CDash instance where the submission's generated documents will be sent

For this tutorial, a public dashboard server is used and its corresponding CTestConfig.cmake file is provided for you in this step's root directory. In practice, this file would be downloaded from a project's Settings page on the CDash instance intended to host the test results. Once downloaded from CDash, the file should not be modified locally.

CTestConfig.cmake
set(CTEST_PROJECT_NAME "CMakeTutorial")
set(CTEST_NIGHTLY_START_TIME "00:00:00 EST")

set(CTEST_DROP_METHOD "http")
set(CTEST_DROP_SITE "my.cdash.org")
set(CTEST_DROP_LOCATION "/submit.php?project=CMakeTutorial")
set(CTEST_DROP_SITE_CDASH TRUE)

Build and Run

Note that as part of the CDash submission some information about your development system (e.g. site name or full pathnames) may displayed publicly.

To create a simple test dashboard, run the cmake executable or the cmake-gui to configure the project but do not build it yet. Instead, navigate to the build directory and run:

ctest [-VV] -D Experimental

Remember, for multi-config generators (e.g. Visual Studio), the configuration type must be specified:

ctest [-VV] -C Debug -D Experimental

Or, from an IDE, build the Experimental target.

The ctest executable will build the project, run any tests, and submit the results to Kitware's public dashboard: https://my.cdash.org/index.php?project=CMakeTutorial.

Solution

The only CMake code changed needed in this step was to enable dashboard submissions to CDash by including the CTest module in our top-level CMakeLists.txt:

TODO 1: Click to show/hide answer
TODO 1: CMakeLists.txt
include(CTest)