[CMake] Is it possible to run unit tests in separate processes?

[Matthew Woehlke]

On 2012-11-01 18:28, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> On 2012-11-01 18:00, Robert Deschambault wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a situation where I would like to run a unit test that requires
>> two
>> separate processes. Is it possible to set this up under CTest?
>
> AFAIK, yes, if you can write a single process that spawns and waits on
> your other processes. (If you're relying on something like python or a
> UNIX shell being available, you could leverage that, with a script, as
> the controller process.)
>
> Basically, anything you can coerce into 'run a single process with some
> arguments, wait on it to exit, and take the exit status and/or output
> parsing as the test result' can be a CTest test.

...as an example:

find_program(BASH_EXECUTABLE bash)
add_test(my_test ${BASH_EXECUTABLE} run_my_test.sh)

Replace bash with python or whatnot depending on what scripting language 
you prefer to use to write the test driver. (Or you can write the driver 
as a C/C++ program and use fork(), as suggested by Leif.)

Don't forget, though, that this is not very portable to e.g. Windows, if 
that matters to your project. (Though fork() is even less so... if you 
care about Windows, using python might be best.)

-- 
Matthew