Step 8: 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 a dashboard. To include support for dashboards we include the CTest module in our top-level CMakeLists.txt.

Replace:

CMakeLists.txt

# enable testing
enable_testing()

With:

CMakeLists.txt

# enable dashboard scripting
include(CTest)

The CTest module will automatically call enable_testing(), so we can remove it from our CMake files.

We will also need to create a CTestConfig.cmake file in the top-level directory where we can specify the name of the project and where to submit the dashboard.

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)

The ctest executable will read in this file when it runs. To create a simple dashboard you can run the cmake executable or the cmake-gui to configure the project, but do not build it yet. Instead, change directory to the binary tree, and then 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 and test the project and submit the results to Kitware's public dashboard: https://my.cdash.org/index.php?project=CMakeTutorial.