Re: [boost] [test] Fixtures and Documentation

From: Dean Michael Berris (mikhailberis_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-07-23 14:14:49

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 1:17 AM, Gennadiy Rozental <rogeeff_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Dean Michael Berris <mikhailberis <at> gmail.com> writes:
>> Thanks, I've elected to convert my tests to use
>> BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_CASE ( testname, fixture_class_name ) instead. Now
>> though, everything looks redundant because I have to put the name of
>> the fixture class everywhere I have BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_CASE (...).
>
> Use BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_SUITE and all test cases inside this test suite will get
> fixture automatically (see unit_test_example_07.cpp for example)
>

Okay, but it's not clear from this example whether using just the
normal BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE ( test_name ) would work with the correct
fixture type set using BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_SUITE. Even in the example,
BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_SUITE (s,F) doesn't really convey much information
except maybe (I'm guessing) create a fixture test suite 's' of type F.
It isn't directly obvious how doing BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_SUITE (...)
will actually influence all BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE(s) (or in the example
BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE_TEMPLATE) in the file.

Perhaps using a convention like "do `#define BOOST_AUTO_TEST_FIXTURE
fixture_type_name` before including 'boost/test/unit_test.hpp'" would
work too and be more convenient -- especially in cases where you have
a family of related tests in one file. That way you just did:

#ifndef BOOST_AUTO_TEST_FIXTURE
#define ...
#endif

in the library to use what the user intended. That way it was less
intrusive than having to create a test suite when all you really have
are a collection of test cases in a test file.

Of course I may be missing some things, but now that I know about
BOOST_FIXTURE_TEST_SUITE, I'll use that in the meantime. :D

>> I notice that there's a global level fixtures, but I'm more interested
>> in something that get constructed/destroyed with every test case
>> invocation -- much like the setUp() and tearDown() overloads in the
>> xUnit family of frameworks.
>
> The fixtures *are* constructed/destroyed per test case.
>

Even the global fixture? I was under the impression that the global
fixture would be something that would be created/destroyed at the
start/end of the program -- more like a program-global fixture. Did I
misunderstand the implication of the term global fixtures?

Thanks for the response, and I look forward to using this library more!

-- 
Dean Michael C. Berris
Software Engineer, Friendster, Inc.