[Boost-users] [Test] How to Access Private Data from a Test

Subject: [Boost-users] [Test] How to Access Private Data from a Test
From: Merrill Cornish (merrill.cornish_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-06-25 15:37:30

In the Bad-Old-Days when I had to roll my own, I would define my tests 
as methods of a special test class.  If those tests needed to access 
private data in the classes under test, I would declare special test 
class as a friend of the class under test--one extra statement and 
everything worked.

How do I do that using Boost test (1.58.0) with the AUTO_TEST family of 
macros?

In the labyrinth of macro expansions, I found a struct name with the 
argument name from  BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE(), but a friend of that name 
doesn't work.

The ideal case would be to declare the string name in 
BOOST_AUTO_TEST_SUITE() as a friend so one friend declaration does it 
all.  Alternately, having to declare a separate friend for each 
BOOST_AUTO_TEST_CASE() would be tedious (especially for large classes), 
but it would work.

At the moment, I'm using the ole private=public trick:

     #define private public
     #include "header_under_test"
     #undef private

However, I've already discovered one system header, <sstream>, that 
won't work with that kludge.  There may be others.

Is there another workaround for Boost Tests?  I can't be the only one 
who has to access private data in tests.

Merrill Cornish