[CMake] CTest examples

[Eric Noulard]

2010/7/9 Bo Thorsen <bo at askmonty.org>:
> Hi people,
>
> I have converted a set of applications to cmake and cpack, and now have my
> eyes set on ctest.
>
> I'd like to hear if someone here has some good advice, or links to good
> advice, on how to structure tests. I'm searching for help on how to put
> different tests into what executables. On how to handle multiple tests on
> each classes, on how to best structure the test of the static libraries (all
> of those are part of the source tree) that are linked in to the application.
> And on how to test classes from the main application itself.
>
> I have read the ctest FAQ, documentation etc. and still don't know anything
> that help me write the actual test code.
>
> From the looks of it, ctest only provides the framework to run a test, no
> help is given to write the code of the tests themselves, is this right? I
> have previously been using cppunit, and it looks like this will still be
> useful.

Yes you are right.
CTest is helping for running tests using "Test Driver".
CTest is useful for continuous integration if you use it with CDash
and for that part (from my point of view) it's useful if do not have
test at all, because you may monitor build breakage on various platform.

It helps even more if the tests application (which may be written using cppunit)
is built using CMake and/or is linked with the library your are
building (with CMake ...)

in an
add_test(NAME TestName
              COMMAND  TestProg)

TestProg (the Test Driver) may be built from an
add_executable(TestProg TestProg.c)
target_link_libraries(TestProg TheTestedLib)

or it may be a custom script (Python or anything you like)
or it may be a custom script which has been "configured" at CMake
time using configure_file....

> To sum it up, I'm looking for real life advice on what you guys have done
> with ctest. This information seem almost completely missing on the net,
> where all searches on ctest leads to useless presentation on ctest features.

Real life usually depends on your life but...
Speaking for myself on two small projects (C and/or C++) I do use
simple (C or C++) test driver applications for basic unit test and
some python scripts for integration tests.

My [compiled C/C++] test drivers simply return 0 if the test is
successfull and something
else if not. CTest understand that out-of-the-box which makes it easy to see
unit test breakage using a simple "make test".

My Python script is driving several interacting applications (from 2 up to 10)
which are part of the build, in the same way the python script return non zero
value on error.

Since the whole testsuite may be running for a long time I'm using CTest
during development in order to easily select test to be run on a particular area
using

ctest -R <regex> = Run tests matching regular expression.

I have my own naming rules for tests name which makes it easy to use.

I'm not using any unit test framework but I think there has already been some
discussion about mixed CMake/CTest CppUnit usage on this list.

Now I really cannot ensure that those advices will be as good
for you as they are too me :-)
-- 
Erk
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