How to create tests for “make check” with GNU autotools

automated-testsautotoolslanguage-agnosticunit testing

I'm using GNU autotools for the build system on a particular project. I want to start writing automated tests for verifcation. I would like to just type "make check" to have it automatically run these. My project is in C++, although I am still curious about writing automated tests for other languages as well.

Is this compatible with pretty much every unit testing framework out there (I was thinking of using cppunit)? How do I hook these unit testing frameworks into make check? Can I make sure that I don't require the unit test software to be installed to be able to configure and build the rest of the project?

Best Answer

To make test run when you issue make check, you need to add them to the TESTS variable

Assuming you've already built the executable that runs the unit tests, you just add the name of the executable to the TESTS variable like this:

TESTS=my-test-executable

It should then be automatically run when you make check, and if the executable returns a non-zero value, it will report that as a test failure. If you have multiple unit test executables, just list them all in the TESTS variable:

TESTS=my-first-test my-second-test my-third-test

and they will all get run.

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Using pkg-config with autotools

pkg-config comes with its own set of Autoconf macros such as PKG_CHECK_EXIST and PKG_CHECK_MODULES. They are documented in the pkg-config man page.

cppunit also comes with its own Autoconf macro AM_PATH_CPPUNIT in the cppunit.m4 file. So that's probably the best place to start.

C# – Using Moq to mock an asynchronous method for a unit test

You're creating a task but never starting it, so it's never completing. However, don't just start the task - instead, change to using Task.FromResult<TResult> which will give you a task which has already completed:

...
.Returns(Task.FromResult(new HttpResponseMessage(System.Net.HttpStatusCode.OK)));

Note that you won't be testing the actual asynchrony this way - if you want to do that, you need to do a bit more work to create a Task<T> that you can control in a more fine-grained manner... but that's something for another day.

You might also want to consider using a fake for IHttpClient rather than mocking everything - it really depends on how often you need it.

Best Answer

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