[CMake] "unit" testing your CMakeLists.txt

[Hugo Heden]

2009/2/11 Tyler Roscoe <tyler at cryptio.net>:
> Bumping this one time. Any thoughts? Is there a better place to ask this
> sort of question?
>

Just wanted to say that I'm interested too, so I'd follow any
discussion with interest.

Best regards

Hugo Heden

> 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?
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