[CMake] HowTo make another Dart client like CMake's ctest?

[William A. Hoffman]

At 02:45 PM 2/21/2006, Matt England wrote:
>(I'm cross-posting this note to both the Dart and CMake mailing lists.  I hope that's ok.)
>
>How can I make my software become another Dart client similar to CMake's ctest?
>
>http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_Testing_With_CTest
>http://public.kitware.com/Dart
>
>
>Details:
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>Is the Dart XML client-to-server "interface specification" documented somewhere?  Is there a library/module I can integrate in my stuff to do this, easily or not?  And...how easy will this be to make?  Can anyone, possibly from the CMake/ctest team, provide any pointers?
>
>I'm going to take a look at CMake's 'ctest' utility for my project's test-reporting purposes.  However, I'm considering having said software be able to (as an "embedded" module or the like) speak "Dart" directly so any client I want can instantly report info back to a Dart server (even for product software released in the field if we so desire).  If I/we do this, I'll no doubt be referencing ctest's source code for this; and if it's not already done, we'll probably look to make said capability a reusable module/library for this in the future.
>
>Alas, don't look for any Java modules out of my project in the near term.  We as of yet don't have any Java-based requirements or components.  We are mostly a C++ based shop, but in a very-cross-platform sort of way (currently include mingw, debian, rhel/centos, and expanding to macosx, freebsd, and others later).
>
>Also: we may be using ctest "straight up" for now if we need to get our tests running right away.  Alas, I have yet to thoroughly investigate ctest.
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>After a discussion I had with Dan Blezec this morning, I suspect that a move like the one above may be the kind of thing that was long-term envisioned by the Dart-system designers.  I understand that the Dart server is a passive mechanism that simply listens for specific XML-based input (over an XML-RPC network "channel") that can quite flexibility receive any and all sort of info via this channel, so long as the info is properly formatted...and I want to submit these properly-formatted test reports to my Dart server natively from my project's applications.
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>This is exactly the sort of "test-data" repository server I had envisioned to set up with my distributed test system (for my project's software), and I was struggling to determine how to quickly quickly build a subsystem to support this.  A Dart server and ctest-like "embedded" seems to solve this problem easily, and I'm quite thankful for this work done by the Dart and CMake teams.

I would think that the Dart/CMake communities as a whole would be better off if your efforts went directly 
into ctest.  My preference would be for you to use ctest "straight up", and if you need new features,
contribute them back to the project.  I think you may also be better off as ctest will keep up
with changes in Dart, and continue be a supported package for the foreseeable future.  
You should figure out what your requirements are for your project, and see if 
they are compatible with ctest.   

-Bill