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

[Robert Ramey]

On 9/4/17 6:40 AM, 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 would like to second this suggestion.  The absence of this feature 
presents a huge obstacle to replicating the functionality of the boost 
build functionality with CMake.  It's amazing to me that after so many 
years CMake doesn't have this functionality already.  It certainly seems 
to me that this would be easy to implement.

I'm aware that suggestions using CMake macros have been proposed.  But 
to the inexperienced user they are not intuitive or easy to understand.

Could we get some response on Edward's suggestion here? It's a serious 
obstacle to implementing support of CMake in Boost libraries.

Robert Ramey