[CMake] Boost.Test, cmake, and visual studio

[Steve M. Robbins]

Hi,

I'd appreciate some advice for writing test cases using Boost.Test
under windows / msvc.

My first trial was, following the advice of the Boost.Test authors
(http://www.boost.org/libs/test/doc/usage/msvc_net.html), to create a
custom build step in visual studio.  This produces output that visual
studio can parse and display as a list of errors to step through.

Such rules, of course, get blown away each time CMake runs.

So I cracked the CMake book and started learning about
ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET.  After some struggle I learned about
ENABLE_TESTING / ADD_TEST and tried that route instead.  
I got as far as the following:

  ENABLE_TESTING()
  ADD_TEST( runTestSuite
    ${EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH}/testSuite --report_level=no
  )

This creates a "RUN_TESTS" rule that I can "build" to run the tests --
just what I was after.  Unfortunately, ctest swallows all the output
from testSuite so I don't know which test of the suite failed nor
which line of code.  Therefore, I don't have the nice error list.  If
I could run ctest with the --verbose option, I think it would be
perfect, but I don't know how to convince cmake to pass --verbose to
ctest.  I looked in vain for a variable to set.  Any idea?

Reluctantly, I gave up and went back to ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET.  The
following gives me exactly what I want:

  PROJECT(examples)
  [...]
  ADD_EXECUTABLE( testSuite ${testSuite_SRCS} )

  set( testSuite_EXE C:/blah/examples/debug/testSuite.exe )

  ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET( RUN_TESTS
    ${testSuite_EXE} --report_level=no
  #  ${examples_BINARY_DIR}/testSuite.exe --report_level=no
  #  ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/testSuite.exe --report_level=no
  #  ${EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH}/testSuite --report_level=no

    DEPENDS ${testSuite_EXE}
  )

But there are two flaws that I need help with.  

1.  I need a better way to find the test binary.  The three
commented-out lines are things I tried but none worked.  There must be
a variable that tells me where testSuite.exe is, but I can't find it.
Note that EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH is not set; however, the analogous
usage in ADD_TEST (see above) *did* work!  (???)

2.  The dependency on testSuite_EXE doesn't work: if I modify one of
the testSuite sources, running the custom target doesn't rebuild
testSuite.exe.  Maybe this is a symptom of #1?


Thanks for reading this far.  
Any suggestions welcome.

-Steve