Re: [Boost-users] Interest in a C++20 Unit Testing Framework?

From: Gavin Lambert (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-11-24 23:12:01

On 24/11/2019 03:45, Vinnie Falco wrote:
> The same cannot be said for unit test libraries, since those types
> don't appear in public interfaces. So again what is the benefit of
> standardization?

Some possible benefits to standardising a unit test framework:

1. The unit tests for a standard library can be published in the 
standard as well (using the standard unit test library), thereby acting 
as additional documentation on intended behaviour and a way to verify 
whether a particular implementation is conforming.

2. Having a standard vocabulary for unit tests that are likely to be 
portable to more platforms and more universally understood by all 
developers (once familiar with the new standard), rather than seemingly 
every project using a different framework.

Having said that, I'm not entirely convinced that it is practical or 
even desirable to do so, since there's still quite a lot of religious 
debates about testing, such as fakes/mocks, expect vs assert, catch2 
nested tests vs suites, AAA mini-tests vs. kitchen sink tests, etc.

And (especially when using mocks) it can be a little too easy to fall 
into the trap of asserting the specific implementation instead of the 
general behaviour, which is expressly what the standard wants to avoid.