[CMake] "unit" testing your CMakeLists.txt

[Tyler Roscoe]

Bumping this one time. Any thoughts? Is there a better place to ask this
sort of question?

Thanks,
tyler

On Mon, Feb 09, 2009 at 12:15:33PM -0800, Tyler Roscoe wrote:
> My company is adopting Test-Driven Development. I am wondering if any of
> you build engineers in a similar position have given any thought to how
> one might use this approach when developing your build systems.
> 
> In one sense, you can say, "Well, the build is the test. If I say 'go'
> and I end up with SuperProduct.exe (and maybe a bunch of unit test
> successes) then everything works and I don't need any tests."
> 
> OTOH, it would be nice to gain some of the benefits of TDD (e.g.,
> fearless refactoring) in the build system. Sometimes there are build
> artifacts that should be generated which are not code and therefore
> won't generate "build errors" (documentation perhaps).
> 
> One approach I've thought of is a simple script that simply makes
> sure that each CMake project deposits an expected list of files in a
> certain place. I have a hierarchy of "buildables" so it might be nice to
> know that the header at the bottom of the dependency tree is built
> correctly, and that the libraries that use it find that header and build
> correctly, and that the executable that use those libraries find
> everything and build correctly.
> 
> Does anyone do anything like this? Are there tools around to help? Is
> this a worthwhile thing to think about?