Re: [boost] Boost header isolation testing

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost header isolation testing
From: James E. King III (jking_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-10-16 11:40:54

On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 4:41 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> On 10/16/18 4:14 AM, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 11:00 AM James E. King III via Boost
> > <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >> In the winapi project there's a neat little Jamfile rule that will
> ensure
> >> each public header will compile properly (i.e. it is not missing any
> >> #include statements).
> >
> > This makes it harder for package managers to build the tests using
> > their desired toolchain, since the bjam portions must be ported. I
> > realize of course this might be a purely theoretical problem before
> > the arrival of the much-heralded "modular boost." I copy Asio's style
> > and include the header first in the test .cpp file, and if there are
> > no tests then I have an empty .cpp file which still includes the
> > header:
> >
> > <
> https://github.com/boostorg/beast/blob/ec1c8ada7a22b274cf6e58c019c2bbe6965f6232/test/beast/core/file.cpp
> >
> >
> > This way if someone compiles the tests with a different system, they
> > will still get the checks to ensure that headers build by themselves,
> > without resorting to fancy build system plugins.
>
> The Jamfile code snippet is not a plugin but is a part of the testing
> script. Given that Boost library testing is currently done with
> Boost.Build, if one want to do the testing with another build system, he
> would have to port that script in its entirety anyway. It doesn't really
> matter whether the tests are generated by scanning the filesystem or are
> spelled out explicitly; in the former case it might be even less manual
> labor.
>
>
I genericized it a little and put it into a PR in logic
<https://github.com/boostorg/logic/pull/12>, however this logic looks like
it could
make it into Boost.Build as a utility or two (one for
test-expected-failures to build everything
inside "compile-fail/", one for test-header-isolation that locates every
header in the
repository include/ path and does an isolation include test on it.  Still
needs a little more work
to be generic, and as was stated may not suit all cases, but I suspect it
will suit most.

I noticed in Boost.Build there are .jam files and .py files for the
utilities, but I didn't see the
connection between them?

- Jim