Re: [boost] Interest check: Boost.Mock

Subject: Re: [boost] Interest check: Boost.Mock
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-06-18 22:27:37

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:43 AM, Peter Bindels<dascandy_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Over the past three-quarters of a year I've been working (with three
> friends) on a mocking framework for C++. In our vision, it would be a good
> complement to Boost.Test for testing classes separate from interfaces
> required - it would improve the ability to unit-test the classes that tie
> others together and that implement higher-level algorithms.
>
> It does this by creating an object that is "derived" from a given class at
> runtime, and replacing the functions with functions that redirect to
> verifying logic. The verifying logic uses basic structures to record
> expectations and to verify they happened. These ways of creating an object
> at runtime and modifying it are highly compiler dependant but remarkably
> portable - as it runs on at least 3 different compiler series (GCC, MSVC,
> EDG-based) and 5 platforms (Windows XP, Windows CE, Linux, QNX, bare
> platform), with few modifications.

This is a great idea for polymorphic interfaces but some interfaces
are not polymorphic. It would be nice if we could provide a mock
implementation of the internal interface even in case none of the
calls to that interface are virtual. Think C API used as your internal
interface:

struct bar;
bar * create_bar(....);
void destroy_bar( bar * );
void use_bar( bar * );

Basically you can alter the implementation by just linking with a
different library instead of bar (I'm not sure how this would work
with the rest of the mock library.)

Emil Dotchevski
Reverge Studios, Inc.
http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode