1 Google C++ Testing Framework
2 ============================
3
4 http://code.google.com/p/googletest/
5
6 Overview
7 --------
8
9 Google's framework for writing C++ tests on a variety of platforms
10 (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows CE, Symbian, etc). Based on the
11 xUnit architecture. Supports automatic test discovery, a rich set of
12 assertions, user-defined assertions, death tests, fatal and non-fatal
13 failures, various options for running the tests, and XML test report
14 generation.
15
16 Please see the project page above for more information as well as the
17 mailing list for questions, discussions, and development. There is
18 also an IRC channel on OFTC (irc.oftc.net) #gtest available. Please
19 join us!
20
21 Requirements for End Users
22 --------------------------
23
24 Google Test is designed to have fairly minimal requirements to build
25 and use with your projects, but there are some. Currently, we support
26 Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and Cygwin. We will also make our best
27 effort to support other platforms (e.g. Solaris, AIX, and z/OS).
28 However, since core members of the Google Test project have no access
29 to these platforms, Google Test may have outstanding issues there. If
30 you notice any problems on your platform, please notify
31 googletestframework@googlegroups.com. Patches for fixing them are
32 even more welcome!
33
34 ### Linux Requirements ###
35
36 These are the base requirements to build and use Google Test from a source
37 package (as described below):
38 * GNU-compatible Make or gmake
39 * POSIX-standard shell
40 * POSIX(-2) Regular Expressions (regex.h)
41 * A C++98-standard-compliant compiler
42
43 ### Windows Requirements ###
44
45 * Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1 or newer
46
47 ### Cygwin Requirements ###
48
49 * Cygwin 1.5.25-14 or newer
50
51 ### Mac OS X Requirements ###
52
53 * Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or newer
54 * Developer Tools Installed
55
56 Also, you'll need CMake 2.6.4 or higher if you want to build the
57 samples using the provided CMake script, regardless of the platform.
58
59 Requirements for Contributors
60 -----------------------------
61
62 We welcome patches. If you plan to contribute a patch, you need to
63 build Google Test and its own tests from an SVN checkout (described
64 below), which has further requirements:
65
66 * Python version 2.3 or newer (for running some of the tests and
67 re-generating certain source files from templates)
68 * CMake 2.6.4 or newer
69
70 Getting the Source
71 ------------------
72
73 There are two primary ways of getting Google Test's source code: you
74 can download a stable source release in your preferred archive format,
75 or directly check out the source from our Subversion (SVN) repositary.
76 The SVN checkout requires a few extra steps and some extra software
77 packages on your system, but lets you track the latest development and
78 make patches much more easily, so we highly encourage it.
79
80 ### Source Package ###
81
82 Google Test is released in versioned source packages which can be
83 downloaded from the download page [1]. Several different archive
84 formats are provided, but the only difference is the tools used to
85 manipulate them, and the size of the resulting file. Download
86 whichever you are most comfortable with.
87
88 [1] http://code.google.com/p/googletest/downloads/list
89
90 Once the package is downloaded, expand it using whichever tools you
91 prefer for that type. This will result in a new directory with the
92 name "gtest-X.Y.Z" which contains all of the source code. Here are
93 some examples on Linux:
94
95 tar -xvzf gtest-X.Y.Z.tar.gz
96 tar -xvjf gtest-X.Y.Z.tar.bz2
97 unzip gtest-X.Y.Z.zip
98
99 ### SVN Checkout ###
100
101 To check out the main branch (also known as the "trunk") of Google
102 Test, run the following Subversion command:
103
104 svn checkout http://googletest.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gtest-svn
105
106 Setting up the Build
107 --------------------
108
109 To build Google Test and your tests that use it, you need to tell your
110 build system where to find its headers and source files. The exact
111 way to do it depends on which build system you use, and is usually
112 straightforward.
113
114 ### Generic Build Instructions ###
115
116 Suppose you put Google Test in directory ${GTEST_DIR}. To build it,
117 create a library build target (or a project as called by Visual Studio
118 and Xcode) to compile
119
120 ${GTEST_DIR}/src/gtest-all.cc
121
122 with ${GTEST_DIR}/include in the system header search path and ${GTEST_DIR}
123 in the normal header search path. Assuming a Linux-like system and gcc,
124 something like the following will do:
125
126 g++ -isystem ${GTEST_DIR}/include -I${GTEST_DIR} \
127 -pthread -c ${GTEST_DIR}/src/gtest-all.cc
128 ar -rv libgtest.a gtest-all.o
129
130 (We need -pthread as Google Test uses threads.)
131
132 Next, you should compile your test source file with
133 ${GTEST_DIR}/include in the system header search path, and link it
134 with gtest and any other necessary libraries:
135
136 g++ -isystem ${GTEST_DIR}/include -pthread path/to/your_test.cc libgtest.a \
137 -o your_test
138
139 As an example, the make/ directory contains a Makefile that you can
140 use to build Google Test on systems where GNU make is available
141 (e.g. Linux, Mac OS X, and Cygwin). It doesn't try to build Google
142 Test's own tests. Instead, it just builds the Google Test library and
143 a sample test. You can use it as a starting point for your own build
144 script.
145
146 If the default settings are correct for your environment, the
147 following commands should succeed:
148
149 cd ${GTEST_DIR}/make
150 make
151 ./sample1_unittest
152
153 If you see errors, try to tweak the contents of make/Makefile to make
154 them go away. There are instructions in make/Makefile on how to do
155 it.
156
157 ### Using CMake ###
158
159 Google Test comes with a CMake build script (CMakeLists.txt) that can
160 be used on a wide range of platforms ("C" stands for cross-platofrm.).
161 If you don't have CMake installed already, you can download it for
162 free from http://www.cmake.org/.
163
164 CMake works by generating native makefiles or build projects that can
165 be used in the compiler environment of your choice. The typical
166 workflow starts with:
167
168 mkdir mybuild # Create a directory to hold the build output.
169 cd mybuild
170 cmake ${GTEST_DIR} # Generate native build scripts.
171
172 If you want to build Google Test's samples, you should replace the
173 last command with
174
175 cmake -Dgtest_build_samples=ON ${GTEST_DIR}
176
177 If you are on a *nix system, you should now see a Makefile in the
178 current directory. Just type 'make' to build gtest.
179
180 If you use Windows and have Vistual Studio installed, a gtest.sln file
181 and several .vcproj files will be created. You can then build them
182 using Visual Studio.
183
184 On Mac OS X with Xcode installed, a .xcodeproj file will be generated.
185
186 ### Legacy Build Scripts ###
187
188 Before settling on CMake, we have been providing hand-maintained build
189 projects/scripts for Visual Studio, Xcode, and Autotools. While we
190 continue to provide them for convenience, they are not actively
191 maintained any more. We highly recommend that you follow the
192 instructions in the previous two sections to integrate Google Test
193 with your existing build system.
194
195 If you still need to use the legacy build scripts, here's how:
196
197 The msvc\ folder contains two solutions with Visual C++ projects.
198 Open the gtest.sln or gtest-md.sln file using Visual Studio, and you
199 are ready to build Google Test the same way you build any Visual
200 Studio project. Files that have names ending with -md use DLL
201 versions of Microsoft runtime libraries (the /MD or the /MDd compiler
202 option). Files without that suffix use static versions of the runtime
203 libraries (the /MT or the /MTd option). Please note that one must use
204 the same option to compile both gtest and the test code. If you use
205 Visual Studio 2005 or above, we recommend the -md version as /MD is
206 the default for new projects in these versions of Visual Studio.
207
208 On Mac OS X, open the gtest.xcodeproj in the xcode/ folder using
209 Xcode. Build the "gtest" target. The universal binary framework will
210 end up in your selected build directory (selected in the Xcode
211 "Preferences..." -> "Building" pane and defaults to xcode/build).
212 Alternatively, at the command line, enter:
213
214 xcodebuild
215
216 This will build the "Release" configuration of gtest.framework in your
217 default build location. See the "xcodebuild" man page for more
218 information about building different configurations and building in
219 different locations.
220
221 If you wish to use the Google Test Xcode project with Xcode 4.x and
222 above, you need to either:
223 * update the SDK configuration options in xcode/Config/General.xconfig.
224 Comment options SDKROOT, MACOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET, and GCC_VERSION. If
225 you choose this route you lose the ability to target earlier versions
226 of MacOS X.
227 * Install an SDK for an earlier version. This doesn't appear to be
228 supported by Apple, but has been reported to work
229 (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5378518).
230
231 Tweaking Google Test
232 --------------------
233
234 Google Test can be used in diverse environments. The default
235 configuration may not work (or may not work well) out of the box in
236 some environments. However, you can easily tweak Google Test by
237 defining control macros on the compiler command line. Generally,
238 these macros are named like GTEST_XYZ and you define them to either 1
239 or 0 to enable or disable a certain feature.
240
241 We list the most frequently used macros below. For a complete list,
242 see file include/gtest/internal/gtest-port.h.
243
244 ### Choosing a TR1 Tuple Library ###
245
246 Some Google Test features require the C++ Technical Report 1 (TR1)
247 tuple library, which is not yet available with all compilers. The
248 good news is that Google Test implements a subset of TR1 tuple that's
249 enough for its own need, and will automatically use this when the
250 compiler doesn't provide TR1 tuple.
251
252 Usually you don't need to care about which tuple library Google Test
253 uses. However, if your project already uses TR1 tuple, you need to
254 tell Google Test to use the same TR1 tuple library the rest of your
255 project uses, or the two tuple implementations will clash. To do
256 that, add
257
258 -DGTEST_USE_OWN_TR1_TUPLE=0
259
260 to the compiler flags while compiling Google Test and your tests. If
261 you want to force Google Test to use its own tuple library, just add
262
263 -DGTEST_USE_OWN_TR1_TUPLE=1
264
265 to the compiler flags instead.
266
267 If you don't want Google Test to use tuple at all, add
268
269 -DGTEST_HAS_TR1_TUPLE=0
270
271 and all features using tuple will be disabled.
272
273 ### Multi-threaded Tests ###
274
275 Google Test is thread-safe where the pthread library is available.
276 After #include "gtest/gtest.h", you can check the GTEST_IS_THREADSAFE
277 macro to see whether this is the case (yes if the macro is #defined to
278 1, no if it's undefined.).
279
280 If Google Test doesn't correctly detect whether pthread is available
281 in your environment, you can force it with
282
283 -DGTEST_HAS_PTHREAD=1
284
285 or
286
287 -DGTEST_HAS_PTHREAD=0
288
289 When Google Test uses pthread, you may need to add flags to your
290 compiler and/or linker to select the pthread library, or you'll get
291 link errors. If you use the CMake script or the deprecated Autotools
292 script, this is taken care of for you. If you use your own build
293 script, you'll need to read your compiler and linker's manual to
294 figure out what flags to add.
295
296 ### As a Shared Library (DLL) ###
297
298 Google Test is compact, so most users can build and link it as a
299 static library for the simplicity. You can choose to use Google Test
300 as a shared library (known as a DLL on Windows) if you prefer.
301
302 To compile *gtest* as a shared library, add
303
304 -DGTEST_CREATE_SHARED_LIBRARY=1
305
306 to the compiler flags. You'll also need to tell the linker to produce
307 a shared library instead - consult your linker's manual for how to do
308 it.
309
310 To compile your *tests* that use the gtest shared library, add
311
312 -DGTEST_LINKED_AS_SHARED_LIBRARY=1
313
314 to the compiler flags.
315
316 Note: while the above steps aren't technically necessary today when
317 using some compilers (e.g. GCC), they may become necessary in the
318 future, if we decide to improve the speed of loading the library (see
319 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Visibility for details). Therefore you are
320 recommended to always add the above flags when using Google Test as a
321 shared library. Otherwise a future release of Google Test may break
322 your build script.
323
324 ### Avoiding Macro Name Clashes ###
325
326 In C++, macros don't obey namespaces. Therefore two libraries that
327 both define a macro of the same name will clash if you #include both
328 definitions. In case a Google Test macro clashes with another
329 library, you can force Google Test to rename its macro to avoid the
330 conflict.
331
332 Specifically, if both Google Test and some other code define macro
333 FOO, you can add
334
335 -DGTEST_DONT_DEFINE_FOO=1
336
337 to the compiler flags to tell Google Test to change the macro's name
338 from FOO to GTEST_FOO. Currently FOO can be FAIL, SUCCEED, or TEST.
339 For example, with -DGTEST_DONT_DEFINE_TEST=1, you'll need to write
340
341 GTEST_TEST(SomeTest, DoesThis) { ... }
342
343 instead of
344
345 TEST(SomeTest, DoesThis) { ... }
346
347 in order to define a test.
348
349 Upgrating from an Earlier Version
350 ---------------------------------
351
352 We strive to keep Google Test releases backward compatible.
353 Sometimes, though, we have to make some breaking changes for the
354 users' long-term benefits. This section describes what you'll need to
355 do if you are upgrading from an earlier version of Google Test.
356
357 ### Upgrading from 1.3.0 or Earlier ###
358
359 You may need to explicitly enable or disable Google Test's own TR1
360 tuple library. See the instructions in section "Choosing a TR1 Tuple
361 Library".
362
363 ### Upgrading from 1.4.0 or Earlier ###
364
365 The Autotools build script (configure + make) is no longer officially
366 supportted. You are encouraged to migrate to your own build system or
367 use CMake. If you still need to use Autotools, you can find
368 instructions in the README file from Google Test 1.4.0.
369
370 On platforms where the pthread library is available, Google Test uses
371 it in order to be thread-safe. See the "Multi-threaded Tests" section
372 for what this means to your build script.
373
374 If you use Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1 with exceptions disabled, Google
375 Test will no longer compile. This should affect very few people, as a
376 large portion of STL (including <string>) doesn't compile in this mode
377 anyway. We decided to stop supporting it in order to greatly simplify
378 Google Test's implementation.
379
380 Developing Google Test
381 ----------------------
382
383 This section discusses how to make your own changes to Google Test.
384
385 ### Testing Google Test Itself ###
386
387 To make sure your changes work as intended and don't break existing
388 functionality, you'll want to compile and run Google Test's own tests.
389 For that you can use CMake:
390
391 mkdir mybuild
392 cd mybuild
393 cmake -Dgtest_build_tests=ON ${GTEST_DIR}
394
395 Make sure you have Python installed, as some of Google Test's tests
396 are written in Python. If the cmake command complains about not being
397 able to find Python ("Could NOT find PythonInterp (missing:
398 PYTHON_EXECUTABLE)"), try telling it explicitly where your Python
399 executable can be found:
400
401 cmake -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=path/to/python -Dgtest_build_tests=ON ${GTEST_DIR}
402
403 Next, you can build Google Test and all of its own tests. On *nix,
404 this is usually done by 'make'. To run the tests, do
405
406 make test
407
408 All tests should pass.
409
410 ### Regenerating Source Files ###
411
412 Some of Google Test's source files are generated from templates (not
413 in the C++ sense) using a script. A template file is named FOO.pump,
414 where FOO is the name of the file it will generate. For example, the
415 file include/gtest/internal/gtest-type-util.h.pump is used to generate
416 gtest-type-util.h in the same directory.
417
418 Normally you don't need to worry about regenerating the source files,
419 unless you need to modify them. In that case, you should modify the
420 corresponding .pump files instead and run the pump.py Python script to
421 regenerate them. You can find pump.py in the scripts/ directory.
422 Read the Pump manual [2] for how to use it.
423
424 [2] http://code.google.com/p/googletest/wiki/PumpManual
425
426 ### Contributing a Patch ###
427
428 We welcome patches. Please read the Google Test developer's guide [3]
429 for how you can contribute. In particular, make sure you have signed
430 the Contributor License Agreement, or we won't be able to accept the
431 patch.
432
433 [3] http://code.google.com/p/googletest/wiki/GoogleTestDevGuide
434
435 Happy testing!