[CMake] 'make test' doesn't build cppunit test executable

[Bill Hoffman]

apervukh at minet.uni-jena.de wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I'm trying to integrate cppunit tests using cmake in our ims library and
> cannot solve the problem how to build tests executables only by demand,
> i.e. by calling 'make test'. I'm quite new to cmake and don't know if this
> is possible at all, but I suppose it should be possible :-)
> I have found some related issues, i.e. this thread,
> http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2007-March/013242.html, but that
> didn't help much.
>
> I followed the steps to enable testing as described in cmake tutorial (or
> here is another link I followed
> http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Development/Tutorials/Unittests&printable=yes#Tutorial_6:_Integrating_with_CMake)
> namely:
>
> 1. enable testing in main CMakeLists.txt
>
> 2. add test in tests/CMakeLists.txt, here is it:
>
> # sets test sources
> set(IMSLIB_TESTS
> 	tests.cpp
> 	alphabettest.cpp
> 	elementtest.cpp)
>
> add_executable(imslib-tests ${IMSLIB_TESTS})
> target_link_libraries(imslib-tests ${CPPUNIT_LIBRARIES} ims)
> add_test(imslib-tests  ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/imslib-tests)
>
> If this is all what I do, then running 'make test' gives error
> ...
>  1/  1 Testing imslib-tests                  Unable to find executable:
> /home/imslib/tests/imslib-tests
> ...
>
> so executable is not even built.
>
> If I add tests directory to project subdirectories (in main
> CMakeLists.txt) via
> add_subdirectory(tests)
>
> then obviously already calling 'make' tries to build executable. In this
> case building and calling tests succeed, but I don't want to build tests
> already by calling 'make', instead give users the opportunity to build
> them by demand.
>
> I also tried to add tests directory via add_subdirectory(tests
> EXLCUDE_FROM_ALL) but that again didn't build test by calling 'make test'.
>
> It looks like running 'make test' doesn't see the dependency that the
> library should be first built and then run, not just run.
>
> Do I oversee something?
>   
You want to look at ctest --build-and-test, there are examples in the 
CMake source tree of how
to do this.   With this you run cmake and make on something that is not 
even part of the larger
project.

-Bill