Re: C++ testing library
On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 06:12:28PM +0100, Jan Gloser wrote:
> Earlier this week I wanted to find a C++ testing library. I tried gtest and
> cppunit but both of them seemed way too much overkill for my needs.
They might be overkill for your current needs, but what about future
needs? As you add more tests, and more complex tests, if you choose
either of these you will at least be fairly confident that the
functionality will be available, should you need it. If you roll
your own, it's almost inevitable that you'll need to extend it over
time, and eventually it'll end up getting towards the complexity of
these, but probably not done quite as well, since these have had
significant use and have been implemented by very good people.
I used libcppunit for 9 years in schroot, and switched over to gtest a
few months ago. Both are good libraries. gtest is more powerful, and
requires less code to do the equivalent tests. I'd recommend it.
Both libraries are simple to use for simple tests. Example of simple
assertions:
https://bitbucket.org/rleigh-debian/schroot/src/33bbfbbce5ae638731527c79068ab40f8da892fb/test/schroot/regex.cc?at=master
But then you can move up to using test fixtures:
https://bitbucket.org/rleigh-debian/schroot/src/33bbfbbce5ae638731527c79068ab40f8da892fb/test/schroot/keyfile.cc?at=master
And then parameterise the tests:
https://github.com/rleigh-dundee/bioformats/blob/cpp-formatreader-interface/cpp/test/ome-xml/color.cpp
Or specialise based upon type:
https://github.com/rleigh-dundee/bioformats/blob/cpp-formatreader-interface/cpp/test/ome-xml/positive-float.cpp
https://github.com/rleigh-dundee/bioformats/blob/cpp-formatreader-interface/cpp/test/ome-xml/constrained-numeric.h
And other variants are also possible.
Unless you have a really good justification for reinventing the wheel,
both cppunit and gtest are both pretty good wheels. While both can be
complex, they aren't /that/ complex, and you aren't forced to use the
more complex functionality if you don't need to. If all you want to do
is simple assertions, gtest is about as simple as it gets for this, and
the error reporting is really good--it will tell you exactly what
failed, including the values, and where, and will also cope with
expected and unexpected exceptions.
Regarding including your code in Debian, unless it's adding value which
the existing solutions don't provide (which I don't think it does), I
don't think that in its current form this is suitable. This is not
intended to discourage--if you want to write a top-notch C++ testing
framework that's really great--but there are many C++ test frameworks
already in existence, and it would certainly be worthwhile evaluating
the strengths and weaknesses of them before committing to adding yet
another.
Regards,
Roger
--
.''`. Roger Leigh
: :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
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