[CMake] Skip(ped) test with CTest?

[Christoph Grüninger]

Hi David,
thanks for your answer and the bug tracker link. I don't have any new 
arguments besides that the arguments and use cases stated in the bug 
tracker apply to our use case, too.

I see it like a poor man's code coverage. Once I forgot to enable MPI 
support in autotools and it reported 47 tests passed, 1 skipped. I 
cannot memorize the absolute number of tests for every program but the 
mentioned skipped tests made me investigate which test was skipped. 
After reconfiguring all 48 tests passed and I was sure, my MPI related 
change did no harm. If the skipped test was reported as passed, I 
actually would falsely assume all tests passed.

As already stated in the bug tracker, I would report skipped tests as 
"not run" and leave CDash as it is. Only CTest needs changes, so no "can 
of worms" to be opened.

Thanks for your answer,
Christoph

> This has been requested before:
>
> http://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=8466
>
> It's in the backlog, would require changes to both ctest and cdash, and
> I'm not enthusiastic about it. Perhaps I just need convincing that it's
> a good idea. For now, there are no plans to implement anything like
> this, and I would recommend that you use a wrapper script approach,
> printing out "skipped" and returning success when you don't actually run
> your test.
>
>
> HTH,
> David
>

-- 
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have
at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise
the programs they write will be pretty weird.         -- Donald Knuth