[CMake] Adding compile and build type tests to CMake/CTest

[Roger Leigh]

On 04/09/17 14:40, Edward Diener wrote:
> Boost Build has tests for running an application successfully or not, 
> for compiling one or more source files successfully or not, and for 
> building one or more source files into an exe or not. These tests in 
> Boost Build are the run/run-fail, compile/compile-fail, and 
> link/link-fail rules.
> 
> CMake/CTest has the exact equivalent to the run/run-fail rule in its 
> add_test framework, but there is not add_test equivalent to the other 
> two sets of rules. It sure would be nice, when Boost transitions to 
> using CMake/CTest instead of Boost Build, if CMake/CTest had the 
> equivalent of the other two sets of types of test in its add_test 
> framework.
> 
> Is there any consensus that these other two types of tests might be 
> valuable for CMake/CTest, or any way to make this happen ?

I've certainly wished for them.  Particularly when testing templated 
code where you want to test that certain things fail correctly, e.g. via 
static_assert or simply being invalid.

I understand it's possible to make this work partially, by creating 
targets which aren't built by default, and then add tests which invoke 
the targets.  But this appears to have some caveats, such as potential 
misbehaviour with parallel testing.  Or you can have a separate CMake 
build for each individual target, but it's extra complexity.  Having a 
proper means of registering such tests would be very, very nice.


Regards,
Roger