Re: [boost] [Release 1.34] Supported Compilers - another view

From: Gennadiy Rozental (gennadiy.rozental_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-01 19:31:29

> Yes.  What do you get from those macros that's very useful beyond what
> BOOST_ASSERT supplies?  I really want to know.  Some people I'll be
> consulting with next week want to know about testing procedures for
> C++, and if there's a reason to recommend Boost.Test, I'd like to do
> that.

So you choose to use BOOST_ASSERT. That essentially means that you couldn't 
have more than one failure.  Now believe it or not there exist the whole 
different testing culture where people starts with *all* of their assertions 
failing. And then they are working to "fix" them all. And it's not that rare 
(at best - nowdays TDD is getting widely spread).
  The Test Tools provide wide variety of "check" different from trivial 
assert. Their primary advantage is they provide as much information as 
possible in case of failure. With assert based testing you bound to invoke 
the debugger in 90% of case if detected failures and only in 10% it's clear 
from output what is going on. With more smart tools you could deduce error 
cause without debugging in 90% and only 10% require more detailed excurtion 
inside test module. Also BOOST_ASSERT is no help when you need to test that 
particular expression does emit some exception.
   The Execution Monitor helps by catching all errors and reporting them in 
similar manner. If BOOST_ASSERT( expr ) emit unexpected exception. you have 
no choice but dig into your program to see what is going on. With Execution 
Monitor there is bog chance that an exception gets detected and reported 
automatically. You don't like that it's catching fatal system erros either. 
But with Unit Test framework it's easily configurable.
   Another topic is test organization. Boost.Test allows to build complex 
complex test trees. In addition it's automate task of testing C++ templates 
for different set of template parameters of parameterized function with 
different set of runtime arguments.
   Latest addition is an ability to test exceptions safety (along the line 
of the work you did) and facility for logged expectation testing (mostly 
useful for interaction/boundary testing). There is more to it. If you are 
really interrested check the docs (well better wait till we update them)

Regards,

Gennadiy